On Thursday and Friday September 23 and 24, 2010, I visited the "THE" marina in Tihany, Lake Balaton, Hungary, being a candidate for the Finn World Masters in 2013. (Later this candidacy was shifted to 2014.)

Tihany is situated on a peninsula in Lake Balaton, at about 7 km from Balatonfüred, where we had the Masters in 2006. See the attached map.

This marina is owned by Finn Master István Rutai and his wife Andrea and they offer a compact venue where hotels, B&B’s, clubhouse, camper area and car park are very close.

It is a very nice marina directly situated at Lake Balaton. THE is very active in organizing sailing activities and I was invited to join the Race Committee on the starting vessel in order to see the starts of the Cadet Class. The race Committee looked very experienced.

The marina has enough room to place 200 Finns or more and enough slipways will be foreseen for the Masters.

Important for the social part: on the lakeside of the Northern pier of the marina is a small bar/restaurant with a terrace.

The genuine Hungarian town of Tihany is not far (2,5 km) from the Marina and has many nice restaurants and a very old monastery. It is a famous touristic town in Hungary.

István told me that an advantage of Tihany is that there are possibilities to sail, depending of wind conditions, on either the North East or the South West side of the peninsula. Both sides appear to have, often, different wind and wave conditions. This gives the Race Committee the opportunity to pick the best conditions every day.

In the Annual Masters Meeting in Pwllheli a presentation will be shown prior to the voting and I will ask István for a pre-presentation for the Masters website.

Take a look at the photo’s I took during my visit.

Fons van Gent,

President Finn World Masters Fleet.

The visit to the venue near Gdansk was deleted after I heard that the nearest accommodation is on a 30 minutes drive from the marina. That would kill the social part of the Masters, so we skipped this venue.

We visited the Sopot Sailing Club, the marina of Gdynia and the Puck Sailing Club.

The sailing conditions are almost the same in all venues, so we mainly paid attention to the details ashore.

The marina of Gdynia is an area with many commercial activities, so we will not be amongst Masters only. There is not much room for parking campers, trailers and cars.

The marina of Puck looked good, but the city of Puck is very small and there are not many accommodations and restaurants. The nearest city (Gdynia) is on a 30 minutes drive.

In the end we concluded that, out of the offered venues, Sopot would be the best one, so our Polish Finn friends (Pjotr Hlavaty , being the Sopot Sailing Club’s President, did not take part in the evaluation) decided this will be the candidate for 2014. The club has enough room for the Finns and campers (in the club area and for the Finns also on the beach), a camping is next door and hotels are in the direct neighborhood. Launching will be from the beach, but without waves. There is a long paved slipway from the club area to the shore side of the beach. From this slipway you can bring your boat on the beach.

Although the Gdansk Basin is part of the Baltic Sea and the water is supposed to be salt there is hardly salt in it. I tasted it in order to be convinced!

The city is on walking distance via a walking path. There are many good restaurants. It has a large pier with a bar/restaurant and a marina at the end.

The Sopot Sailing Club will prepare a pre-presentation which will be published on this website and later a presentation which will be shown in Pwllheli, in May next year, prior to the voting for the venue in 2014.

Attached to this report are some pictures of the Sopot venue.

Fons van Gent,

President Finn World Masters Fleet.