Panorama Photo

Details
Location:	Terneuzen (70 m)	by:	Mentor Depret
Area:	Netherlands	Date:	2017 10 07

Every year in October, the Antwerp Race for sailing yachts is held. This year it was the 30th edition of what is considered the most famous sailing race of the Benelux. Because of the heavy traffic on the river Scheldt, a maximum of only 225 yachts is allowed for safety reasons and this number is always over subscribed. The yachts are subdivided in no less than 9 rating classes: CR1,2,3,4,5,6 and IRC-1 and Maxi, IRC-2 and multi (hulls) and IRC-3 and sports class.
The longer the boat the faster it is in general. The bigger yachts have to start at Breskens while the smaller a bit further upstream near Terneuzen, actually at the other side of the river near Ellewoutsdijk.

A quite strong 6 Beaufort SW wind was a guarantee for a spectacular race as you can see in the links below. Unfortunately, long distance photography was hampered by drizzle and mist. But I was lucky to shoot a nice document with nearly all participating boats.
The fastest boat undoubtedly was Sanya Lan, nearly as fast as a container ship. At the moment of shooting, she was far ahead but later on missed a buoy, stranded and lost the race completely.

Yacht registration fee is only 150 € but if you want to enjoy the race on board of a yacht, you can hire a place costing 1000 - 1500 €.

It was extra low tide making the sand plates well visible.

http://antwerprace.be/
https://www.clubracer.be/2017/10/8/video-spectaculair-zeilen-tijdens-30ste-antwerp-race
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:198277/mmsi:235088704/imo:0/vessel:SANYA_LAN

Canon Eos M6 with EM-F 18-150 mm, 19 pics, 100 mm (160 mm KB, with pano crop about 280 mm KB), iso 125, f 6.3, 1/500 s, stitched with PTGui pro, 30000x1892 px 25.7 MB jpeg, downsized 10989x500 px 2.5 MB jpeg.

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Comments

Nice contrast between the sailing yachts and the big vessel. KR Arno

2017/10/14 11:36 , Arno Bruckardt

People seem not to realize how difficult this pano was to stitch and how many correction I had to do view the hundreds of moving ships and the hazy atmosphere. As such PTGui couldn't find matching points on many of the pics and a lot of boats appeared twice or as blurred spots after blending.

2017/10/15 11:53 , Mentor Depret

Schöne Szene, aber das Bild würde meines Erachtens deutlich gewinnen, wenn die Konzentration auf die Regatta da wäre. Die Spannung ist im turbulenten Hauptfeld, danach kommt nach rechts erst einmal ein Vakuum bis zur Fähre. Dazwischen geschnitten würde dem Bild guttun. Etwas mehr Schärfe im Hintergrund ebenso. Auch wirken die Farben etwas trist.

2017/10/15 14:17 , Dieter Leimkötter

Dear Dieter, thx for your comment but the light and visibility conditions were extremely poor and a further increase of contrast - which I tried - made the container ship nearly black. Also a further increase of saturation made the water to look very unnatural. Compared to the originals, it is already enhanced enough I think. Hopefully next edition, atmospheric conditions will be better but this view of the river is a once in a year and I didn't want to miss it.

2017/10/15 21:23 , Mentor Depret

I usually like panos as long as possible, but that is a matter of taste.

2017/10/18 20:12 , Jan Lindgaard Rasmussen