It was a beautiful, long and warm Summer. For the end of that unforgettable Summer, we have something completely different…

The end of Summer in Smederevo is the time of festivals, where people proudly present their agricultural products, organize folk performances and celebrate the farewell to Summer similar to what Rainer Maria Rilke described in his poem Autumn Day…

But this time we won’t bore you with tons of photos of beautiful fruit, street balloon vendors, folk dances, clowns… OK, just one clown, she’s too colorful!

Today we are going to say a famous sentence: And now for something completely different, and go – sailing! We are going to follow the adventure of Skipper Wolf, son of our Hive account@ladysnowhite, and his partner in the boat, Marija Milićević, at the Charles Cup 2024:

For three long Summer months, not a drop of rain fell in Smederevo. The start of the competition was scheduled for Saturday, September 7, but it was postponed… because of the rain! Fortunately, because it allowed me to arrive at the event while the sailboats were still entering the water.

Since guests from North Macedonia took part in this regatta, it had the character of an international competition.

The competition took place in three classes. The youngest performed in the ‘bath tubs’ of the ‘Optimist’ class…

With the acquisition of experience, the younger categories move to more serious sailboats of the ‘Laser’ class.

The most serious (Olympic) class marked as '470' consists of sailboats with two sails and two crew members. Here are our favorites, Wolf and Maria.

Then the marking of the path began with the placement of buoys, and the inspectors watched from the water and from the air…

And no, these are not fans, but referees who give the signal to start the competition!

Speaking of fans… it’s a shame that there weren't more of them at such an interesting competition. I'm afraid the competition wasn’t presented well enough to the wider public. Mostly friends and family of the competitors came, as well as local residents whose everyday life was disrupted by the competition:

And the action begins!

Turns in sudden gusts of wind are particularly attractive to the audience.

I was late for the competition on the second day, but the priority was to make a few photos of the winners at the podium…

And when the crews pulled the sailboats ashore, the long wait for the results and the preparation for the awarding of the trophies began…

And finally, around three o’clock, the announcement of the winner began!

Of course, we were most interested in our favorites Skipper Wolf Petrović and Marija Milićević, who won third place!

I’m sorry that I didn’t get the complete information about the winners in time, but here is the podium for the end of this beautiful competition.

The season is coming to an end, and we hope that we will have more opportunities to film such beautiful competitions. I wish you good wind!

All photos taken with the Fujifilm X-T20 camera with the Canon EFs 18-135mm f3.5-5.6 IS USM nano lens adapted to the Fuji body using Fringer adapter, and Minolta AF 75-300mm f4.5-5.6 lens.

This post is made as a contribution to a photo challenge done in collaboration of two of our members: Hive account@tattoodjay hosts a competition called “Wednesday Walk” and Hive account@elizacheng’s contest called “Make me Smile”.