48-hour Blue Ribbon Regatta Winner Completes Journey in 18 Hours in Windless Race

Fanni Kaszás 2020.07.31.

On Thursday, hundreds of sailors took to the waves of Lake Balaton at Balatonfüred to test themselves on one of the most popular sailing regattas in Europe, the Kékszalag (Blue Ribbon). The competing sailors have 48 hours to complete the journey back to the city. This year, the RSM2, governed by Róbert Vándor, was the first sailboat to cross the finish line of the 52nd Blue Ribbon Raiffeisen Grand Prix on Friday morning after an extremely windless race.

Fact

The Kékszalag is the oldest lake circumnavigation competition in Europe, with the first race held back in 1934, originally once every two years (except in 1944 and 1946 because of the Second World War), and yearly since 2001. Since its start, the sailing course has remained more or less the same: the start and finish lines are situated at Balatonfüred and sailors complete an approximately 150 km long course around the lake.

The RSM2 catamaran reached Balatonfüred at 2:52:57 a.m. on Friday on the slowest Kékszalag race of the last ten years. Other members of the crew of the winning ship were Zsolt Kalocsai, Péter Lange, István Bali, Botond Margitics, and András Fekete. According to the race website, this year’s fastest boat completed the approximate distance in 17 hours 52 minutes 57 seconds.

photo: György Varga/MTI

For the first time this year, the Minister of Justice Judit Varga, also set off to compete at the Kékszalag. Varga was circumnavigating Lake Balaton on the team of the president of the Hungarian Sailing Association, Lajos Kollár, in a classic Tabu 40 Cruiser in the competition.

This year’s Blue Ribbon was nominated by 535 ships in 27 ship classes.