DONA PAULA: Manish Kapileshwar & Sheri Bamboat captured Master and Grandmaster title respectively in Seabird class; while, Goa’s Derrick Menezes and Sunil Rajani topped the Grandmaster and Masters section in Windsurfing as the three-day 75 Knots National Masters Sailing Regatta drew to a close off Hawaii Beach here on Wednesday.
The last day of the championship today saw a lot of excitement on the water with tough sailing conditions due to strong winds and heavy sea swell.
Manish had to fight tooth and nail today to establish his supremacy in the masters group of the Seabird class. He faced a strong challenge from Abhimanyu Patankar & team who won the first race of the day.
In all 3 races, there was a close tussle between Abhimanyu, Manish and Vivek Shanbag with leads changing on every leg of the race. Manish, however, showed better understanding of the conditions with his vast experience to take the honours in the 2nd and 3rd race of the day.
Vivek Shanbag put a creditable performance to nose out Abhimanyu Patankar and to take 2nd spot in the 2nd & 3rd race. In the 2nd bout of races, Sanjeev Chaudhary made a clean sweep winning all 3 races in the masters category. This enabled him to take 3rd position overall in the masters group.
In the Grandmasters event, Sheri established his supremacy by winning all 3 races of the day in the afternoon session while Cesar Menezes won 2 races in the Grandmasters section in the morning session to ultimately take the 2nd overall position.
In Windsurfing, Derrick established his total supremacy in Grandmasters category by winning all the races with Zamir taking the 2nd spot. In the masters category, Sunil Rajani won all 3 races of the day to win the championship followed by Ashish Saxena.
