The sailor Lilí Skomska (RCNGC) leads the overall standings at the end of the first day of the Canary Islands Optimist Championship – Canary Islands Day, which gathers 111 young sailors from 5 islands of the archipelago at Puerto Rico beach (Mogán) over the weekend.
Athletes from 8 yacht clubs from La Palma, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, Tenerife, and Gran Canaria spend two days of racing and camaraderie at the Joaquín Blanco Torrent Sailing School, an emblematic place for Gran Canarian dinghy sailing.
Besides Lilí, who is the provisional overall leader and under-16 female leader, the other category leaders are: Jorge Pérez (RCNT), in under-16 male; Alberto Medina (RCNT), in under-13 male; Lola Carrión (RCNA), in under-13 female; Luis del Castillo-Olivares (RCNGC), in under-11 male, and Dácil Merino (CM Varadero), in under-11 female.
The wind took time to settle, and after suspending a race due to a sudden wind shift with a loss of pressure and a couple of hours of waiting on the water, the first and only race was finally able to start around two-thirty in the afternoon with a south wind of 5 to 6 knots in intensity and gentle seas, on a typical sunny day on the southwest coast of Gran Canaria.
The Canary Islands Sailing Federation organizes the regatta with sponsorship from Grupo Armas Trasmediterránea and collaboration from the Government of the Canary Islands, the Mogán Town Hall, Disa Foundation, Canarian Ports, Puerto Rico SA, and the island sailing federations of Tenerife and Gran Canaria.
In addition to crowning the champions of the Canary Islands in the various categories, this is the last regatta that will count towards forming the Canarian Optimization Team, a new initiative aimed at providing maximum development opportunities for athletes.
This Sunday, the second and final day of the championship, at least one more race must take place for the regatta to be valid.
