Friendship Regatta 2024: Fanari - Alexandroupolis - Samothrace

Every summer, the north Aegean 🌊 turns into a meeting point for sailors 🫡 from across the Balkans and beyond. The Friendship Regatta ⛵ brings together crews from Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia and further afield, and in 2024 I finally got to be part of it. 🌍

I had raced in multi-leg regattas before, but this was my first time at this event, and it has a character of its own. The racing is real 🏁 and the crews want to win 🌟, yet the heart of it 💙 is the friendly atmosphere and the feeling of a fleet travelling the coast together. This is the story behind the video. 👫👬

👥 The crew

I had the pleasure of sailing on a truly diverse team, with Dimitris Sofitsis as our skipper. We were 9 people from 3 countries, and some of us had met only day(s) before the start.

That mix is the whole point of a regatta with "friendship" in its name. On board, nationality stops mattering fast. What matters is who trims the jib, who reads the gusts, and who brings coffee and breakfast at 8 a.m. Dimitris kept us organised, calm and quick, and gave everyone a clear role from the first leg.

Our boat Hakuna Matata was Comet 41S, 41ft, racing in performance / Division 1.

🧭 The route

The 2024 edition ran over 2 legs, 2 in-shore races and roughly 80-85 nautical miles, from Fanari to Therma, Samothrace along the north Aegean coast.

That is where the friendship part really happens: crews from different countries on the same quay, comparing tracks, arguing about laylines and sharing dinner. The racing ends at the finish line; the regatta carries on until late at night.

🌊 The challenges

The north Aegean in summer is famous for the meltemi, and it rarely behaves the same way two days in a row. Here is what tested us most.

• The wind. Dynamic weather - near-calm mornings that switched to 35+ knots by afternoon, sudden gusts off the headlands, holes where the fleet parked.
• Starts and close-quarters sailing. With 23 boats on the line, every start was tight. Right-of-way rules stop being theory when a bow is a few metres off your beam.
• Long hours on deck. Racing means no autopilot and no breaks from trimming. Sun, salt and fatigue add up over several days.
• A crew that just met. Manoeuvres that a regular team does on instinct, we had to build from scratch: who calls the tack, who handles the sheets, who goes forward.
• Riding a scooter for the first time. 🛵 Steep hills and winding mountain roads on this magnificent island made my first scooter ride both a bit scary and truly inspiring. Later that year, I got my motorcycle license and an adventure tourer bike.

Our result: 2nd place 🥈 overall and in the performance class, a rewarding experience racing against the professionals on Lili II and the experienced crew of Theodora.

🤝 My first Friendship Regatta

I knew the format; what I didn't know was the spirit of this particular event. Here the competition is serious on the water, but it never takes over.

Three things that set it apart:

1. Rivals by day, friends by night. The boat you fought for a layline in the afternoon is the boat you share a table with in the evening. Nobody holds a grudge past the finish line.
2. A fleet that travels together. Each leg moves everyone to a new harbour, so the regatta feels less like a series of races and more like a shared voyage along the coast.
3. People over podiums. Crews from across the Balkans and beyond, many of them returning year after year, make it feel like a reunion as much as a race. Sailing it with Dimitris and a mixed crew made that even more true.

I also learned a lot about filming in race conditions. Keeping cameras dry, safe and out of the way of the crew, while still catching the action, is its own challenge.

🏝️ Off the boat: Alexandroupolis and Samothraki

Some of the best moments of the regatta happened between races. 🌄

In Alexandroupolis, we got up early and welcomed the sunrise 🌅 for July Morning, the Bulgarian tradition of greeting the first sun of July by the sea. Watching it come up over the Aegean, with the boats resting in the harbour behind us, was the perfect start to a day off the racecourse.

Then the last legs brought the fleet to Samothraki. There we rented scooters 🛵 and headed inland to the waterfalls. The ride climbs through green, wild hills that feel nothing like a typical Greek island. At the end of the trail, the reward was a swim in the cold, clear pools under the falls. 💦 After days of salt water and sun, nothing felt better.

We rode back along the sea road as the sun went down 🌇, the coast glowing orange on one side and the mountain on the other. A sunrise in Alexandroupolis, a sunset on Samothraki, and racing in between: that is the Friendship Regatta.

Race results: FRIENDSHIP REGATTA 2024