2015 Dutch Open Dragoon Podium
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Klaas van Duin, Tuesday, 25 August 2015 The 2015 Dutch Open Nationals: it was a thrilling event! Beautiful sunny weather, +25 degrees Celsius and nice wind; it was offshore so pretty fluky, ranging from 12 to 20 knots SE. On Sunday wind turned slightly more east and increased to 18 - 28 knots! We sailed 3 races on each Saturday and Sunday (total 6) for Wildcat, FX One, Dragoon and Hobie16.
In total we had 43 boats, which was an increase after 4 years! 7 WildCat, 2 FXOne, 16 Dragoon and 18 HC16, very glad to see this results.
WildCat was dominated by Ad & Maarten Noordzij (father and son). They won all races for WildCat, having Hans van der Plas/Karel de Mooij from Katwijk in second and Dirk & Willard Schonenberg (also Katwijk) in third.
Hobie FX One showed a repeated battle between Marleen van Nes and Klaas van Duinfor the 3rd consecutive year and (again) Klaas van Duin managed to stay on top. Klaas van Duin won 4 of 5 races, in the other Klaas van Duin capsized over twice in the gusts.
Hobie Dragoon was a delight to see, all the youngsters from 4 major Dutch clubs (Noordwijk, Katwijk, Wassenaar & The Hague) competing with 5 teams from RBSC Oostende (Belgium). Belgian teams were a size to big for the Dutchies, thus Lucas Claeyssens/Cyriak Brems won from Frederic Vandewalle/Morgane de Vos and Nicolas de Vos/Victor Vandenbulcke. A big compliment for Laurent Verbeeke, their coach!
Finally the Hobie 16 bringing some legends to the start. In the last 6 years Rogier Duijndam/Sonja Steenvoorden won all but one Dutch Nationals on Hobie 16 and now had to deal with Thorin Zeilmaker/Nolty Geijssen, the Schuitema brothers and 'good old' Peter Manvis (with Fred Caspers as crew). Saturday Rogier and Thorin traded places with Thorin winning twice and Rogier once. Battle became even more fierce on Sunday with both winning one race each before the sixth and final race. Thorin/Nolty got an OCS and Capsized, but Rogier/Sonja gave it away in the last leg to Peter Manvis, thus leaving Thorin and Nolty with one point less and the new Dutch champs on Hobie 16!
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