Twenty nine teams from 10 countries, including Australia and the Bahamas, are gathered in Bénodet at the Yacht Club de l’Odet for the 5.5 Metre class world championship.
Competition throughout this fleet, which includes several former Olympic sailors, as well as national and international champions across multiple classes, is always intense.
This year is no exception and there are plenty of teams with the potential to win.
Defending champion Aspire with Przemek Gacek, Mateusz Kusznierewicz and Kilian Weise is clearly a hot contender, but failed to qualify for the final races of the Scandinavian Gold Cup last week.
Nevertheless, Kusznierewicz, who has won Finn class Gold and Bronze Olympic medals, and the Star world championship, remains a formidable competitor.
Boats expected to be in the leading pack are:
Norwegian entry Artemis of Kristian Nergaard, Johan Barne and Trond Solli-Saether.
Bahamian entry John B of Gavin McKinney, Lars Horn Johannessen and Mathias Dahlman.
And the British entry The Jean Genie of Peter Morton, Andrew Palfrey, Ruairidh Scott.
In addition to the overall world championship title, the older Evolution and Classic boats are also setting up for close competition.
In the warm up regattas last week, the Hankø Evolution Cup and Royal Haag Classic Cup, two boats stood out in particular having won all their races: Ali-Baba (Wolf-Eberhard Richter, Beata Kallkowski and Jorg Grunewald) in the Evolution division and Manuela V (Guido Tommasi, Matteo Barison and Andrea Racchelli) among the classics.
However, there are more boats racing this week and the world championship will kick off in different weather to the light airs of the past few days, with a gusts to 20 knots or above possible.
Ten races are scheduled over the next five days.
