Race One of the SCF Black Sea Tall Ships Regatta 2014 comes to its final stages with three leaders approaching the port of Novorossiysk, Sail Training International reports.
Current positions (all on corrected time) are as follows:
Class A
1st Nadezhda (Russia)
2nd Mir (Russia)
3rd Mircea (Romania)
The situation regarding Rah Naward's (Pakistan) provisional position of yesterday evening has sorted itself out and she is now showing as 4th in class and 7th overall.
Class B
1st Johanna Lucretia (UK)
There have no reports from the other B class vessels - Adornate (Romania) and Bodrum (Turkey), however at the time of the communications schedule (0500 UTC) Adornate was 11 miles from the finish, and Bodrum 38 miles from the finish.
Class C/D
1st Sea Adventure (Bulgaria) - also 1st overall
2nd Akela (Russia) - also 3rd overall
3rd Viking (Russia)
Positions given are provisional until all vessels have arrived in port and submitted their race declaration forms to the race office.
The battle between Nadezhda and Mir finished overnight with Nadezhda triumphant, crossing the line at 0059hrs 23 secs and Mir an hour and a half later at 0230 hrs 02 secs.
Due to the prevailing wind conditions, the Race Committee has decided to shorten the race by 24 hrs and change the time limits as follows:
Class A 08 May at 0000hrs UTC
Class B,C, D 08 May at 0030 hrs UTC
This will enable all ships to get into Novorossiysk by the required time of 1200 noon local time on 9 May.
The weather looks to be going light after the present blow has gone through. Locally the forecast is winds of ENE 30m/sec going through by 2200 hrs local tonight although there is a chance it will be mostly north of Novorossiysk in the Sea of Azov.