Congratulations to Louis Tilly for securing 3rd Junior and to Jervis Tilly for taking out the Super Master title at the recent WASZP Euros.
The WASZP European Games were hosted at the French national sailing centre in Quiberon, Brittany from 17-23 July 2023 . The ENVSN (L’Ecole Nationale de Voile et des Sports Nautiques) center is a massive and well resourced facility primarily supporting the French olympic sailing program and a number of the officials for the WASZP Euros came directly from the Olympic Test Event held in Marseille. Protected from the Atlantic, the waters off Quiberon get a reasonably reliable summer thermal and are blessed with generally flat water; conditions ideal for the one-person foiling WASZP Class.
There were 150 male and female entrants from all over Europe and the UK, Switzerland, etc. with representatives from Australia, NZ, US and Argentina. The scale of the event was highlighted in the Distance Race designed for all 150 boats to start together on one line. The racing also included the downwind only Slalom format and more classical windward leeward “Championship Racing” and a separate Green fleet for those learning to foil.
RPAYC was represented by Louis Tilly and Jervis Tilly with the other Australians being the reigning Victorian State Champion, Tom Trottman and the WASZP class designer and foiling legend, Andrew McDougal (AMac).
In the Slalom racing, Louis qualified through to the finals and ended up as 2nd Junior and 13th overall.
After an amazing top 10 finish in the gruelling Distance Race, Louis easily qualified for Gold fleet and went on to be 3rd Junior in the Championship racing. Louis had a troubled build up with illness on top of back issues keeping him from fully competing on the Euro Warm-up event a week earlier. Overall, these impacted his ability to hang on to the top competition, especially when the breeze came up. Louis commented that he was taking away many learnings in his build-up to the Worlds in Sorrento in December but was most happy that he has been able to catch up with so many WASZP friends and make heaps of new ones. He said he really valued the support he is receiving from Zhik.
Some pre-event chatter focussed on the rivalry between Jervis and AMac, however, the anticipated close Super Master finish was between Jervis and Spaniard Mikel Vazquez. Jervis prevailed by just 4 points after 17 races in a wide variety of conditions. In the gold fleet racing, it seemed the two were finishing within few paces in each race. Jervis did not comment on speculation of a “match racing mind-set” after Mikel elected to take an immediate penalty for an incident on the final downwind of race 16.
