Violeta Alvarez’s GBR57 Erica has won the International Six Metre Classic Swiss Championship on Lake Geneva. Eric Monnin’s SUI100 Duclop won the Open Championship.
Société Nautique de Genève race officer, Yoann Lelièvre, managed to perfectly predict precisely where and when the breeze was going to fill in from throughout the day. After holding the fleet ashore until shortly before 1230 he assembled the collective 50-boat fleet (20 Open and 30 Classic) on the northern race area, where 7-8 knots of northerly breeze had materialised. Then, later in the day, with one race completed, he led the competitors back to the southerly end of the lake where a new breeze from the south materialised right on cue.
In the Classic Championship, Philippe Durr’s SUI44 Astrée won the first race of the day and an eighth in the second race initially saw the Swiss crew finish fifth overall. However an amendment by the race committee posted at 2100 this evening saw that first race thrown out because Astrée finished one minute and 17 seconds outside the time limit.
That change saw Osi Paija’s FIN80 Astrée III‘s win in the second race secure the Finns second place overall, with Andrea Bianchedi’s ITA43 Dan taking third.
Erica skipper, Alvarez, was very quick to praise the hard work of her crew.
“I just focus on the telltales and trying to keep the boat going fast,” she said. “I rely an awful lot on my crew – they are lovely boys and they look after me very well.”
Second-placed Paija said he and his Finnish crew were super happy with the racing on Lake Geneva at the Swiss Championships.
“We enjoyed our race win today. The conditions were super shifty but our rhythm was completely right – so that’s satisfying.”
Asked what his team had learned ahead of next week’s European Championships, Paija said he thought the key would be staying alert at all times.
“This is a really tricky lake to try to understand. It can be so shifty that it is really hard to predict what happens next. You just have to keep your eyes open and watch the water around you at all times.”
In the Open Fleet, Loic Forestier’s SUI77 Junior won the opening race but stumbled in the second race after getting trapped on the wrong side of a large right shift on the first beat. That mistake saw them finish seventeenth and dropped the Swiss crew to third overall.
Meanwhile, despite winning the second race today, an OCS disqualification in the previous race dropped Dieter Schön’s IVB145 Momo down to fourth overall.
Second in the Open Championship was Jan Eckert’s SUI140 GinkgoToo, after a fourth and a fifth today.
Open Championship winner Monnin said his team’s ultra-consistent string of results (1,2,2,2) had not come without enjoying a little good fortune over the four-race series.
“We had some luck for sure,” he said. “We tried to limit risk as much as we could – but in these conditions that is not always possible. So we were lucky not to fall into the traps. Twice we had bad starts today, but got lucky because we got forced to the favoured side of the course.”
Looking ahead to next week’s European Championships, Monnin said he felt glad to have had the Swiss Championship to get warmed up.
“I’m still relatively new to this class and I still have a huge amount to learn – so this regatta has been super valuable for us.”
Trophies for the 2026 International Six Metre Swiss Championships will be awarded at a prizegiving ceremony tomorrow evening at the Société Nautique de Genève, prior to the official opening ceremony for the 2026 European Championships.
International 6 Metre Association 