Euromed Championship on Dec. 18

The now established Euromed Malta Championship, organised by the Malta Young Sailors Club in partnership with the Kunsill Malti għall-iSport and the Mellieħa Local Council, is back this month with its 11th edition. The championship is held under the auspices of the Malta Sailing Federation.

Precisely between December 18 and 21, Mellieħa Bay makes up the racing arena for an eventful international tournament contested by young sailors.

The Optimist Sailing Dinghy, the internationally recognised one design single-handed sailing craft, will be raced. Eligible to participate in this class are ‘sailors’ under the age of 16 years.

This year’s edition will see some 86 optimist sailors on the water, the best turn-out since 2007, the record year when 120 competitors took part.

Besides the Optimist Class, competitive racing will also be held for the Laser 4.7, the Laser Radial as well as the Laser Standard.

In the Optimist class the fleet will be divided into the Junior Cadet Class and the Open category. The Lasers Regatta is reserved for over-16-year-old competitors, all of whom are past Optimist sailors.

This year, some 25 competitors are expected to contest the Laser Regatta. This is the largest fleet of laser sailors for the event. There will be Russian, Italian and English sailors competing against our local 4.7 sailors which include GSSE medallists Ella Fleri Soler and Thomas Zammit Tabona.

Sicily provides the biggest optimists’ contingent this year with 33 sailors, followed by Malta with 25, Russia 16, Israel 7 and the United Kingdom with 4. Registration is still open and more Sicilian sailors are expected to register in the coming days.

The young Sicilian sailors hail from various sailing clubs, the like of Circolo Vela e Tennis of Messina, Club Nautico Augusta, Club Vela LNI Crotone, Circolo Velico Kaukana, the Circolo Velico Reggio, the Circolo Velico Marsala, the Circolo Velico Ravennate and the Club Nautico Punto Piccola.

This great response from Sicilian sailing clubs is the result of the prevailing excellent working relationship that stand between the local organisers and Dott. Ignazio Pipitone, president of the Settima Zona within FIV.

The Russian contingent is made up of sailors coming from different clubs but mainly from the SC Parusnik and the Rautu Sailing Team both from St Petersburg.

The Israeli team from the Haifa Sailing Club is back after an absence of three years. This ‘comeback’ is again a result of the good relations that prevail between the Maltese organisers and Nino Shmueli, of the Israeli Sailing Federation, who was in Malta three years ago as a member of the international jury.

An international jury comprised of Babette Delhart, from France, Tullio Giraldi, from Italy, Trevor Lewis, from GBR, Jovin Rausi and Godwin Zammit from Malta under the chairmanship of Peter Valentino and assisted by the Malta sailing federation president Anna Rossi, will run the technical and logistic aspect of the championship. Peter Dimech will be the event’s principle race officer.

Hotel Riu Seabank in Mellieħa will be the Championship’s official hotel with its beach facilities earmarked to be the main hub for sailors and race officials alike throughout the four-day event.