With Harry Melges on Star finally showing a chink in his armor by getting a scoring penalty in Race 9, Flavio Favini and the Blu Moonies have officially won the Gill Melges 24 Worlds in Geelong-tucky, Australia, with an 8 point lead after 11 races With just a 26-boat fleet it remains a 5-boat race for the podium without a single Aussie in contention, with previous World Champs on four of those five; if Star can pull it off, it’ll mark a great bookend to Harry’s Melges 24 Worlds victory in 2002, and it’ll be the 27,000th Melges World title for Federico Michetti. If Flavio can take it, it’ll bookend his 2001 Worlds victory. Above video is thanks to Beau Outerridge and the M24 Channel, and features the gorgeous Shona Wilmot. Results are here, and here’s a word from Bora aboard West Marine Rigging via Facebook:
“Sometimes it feels like Groundhog Day. We ended up with basically the same scoreline that we had yesterday, but the boys fought way harder and deserved a much better result. We lead the last race for about 99.5% of the race. Unfortunately I am a master of collecting plastic bags and we had one wrapped around the keel for the majority of the race. Luckily it only cost us one place in the end but it would have been good to finish the day with a bullet. 2 more days to go and anything can happen. Hopefully we can snag a couple bullets in the end and see where the cards fall.
“Out from Geelong.”
