The Brest International Festival of Sailors is taking place from 11th to 17th July 2008.

It is a large sailing event organized in Brest, France.

At this year’s event Croatia, Vietnam and Madagascar will be the guests of honors. These three countries will be participating with vessels which, until recently, were quite unknown to the nautical heritage. 

According to the organizers ” The idea of a Croatian village at BREST 2008 originated at BREST 2004. To be more precise, it started on Wednesday 14th July around a pitcher of excellent red wine from Dalmatia during a lively discussion between Josko Bozanic, Thédo Fruithof and Anne Burlat on board the gajeta fishing boat “Comeza Lisboa” (see bellow photo), which was moored in number three dock. It would appear that this was not really the drink talking, or the excitement of the moment, because two and a half years later, the foundations were laid and everything was in place for there to be a wonderful, strong Croatian presence at the Brest Festival.”

Above photo : Gajeta sailing boat “Comeza Lisboa” from Croatia at Brest 2004

Brest will be welcoming around ten authentic traditional boats representing Croatia’s maritime heritage:

• the gajeta falkusa “Comeza-Lisboa” (9 m)
• the falkusa baby-boat “Molo” (5 m ) with the backing of UNESCO 
• Betinska Gajeta, a 7m replica, which will be used by the sailing school run by the Lateen Sail Club in Murter
• Bracera, a 9.5m replica to be launched on 15th August in Dubrovnik
• Condura Croatica, the replica of a 12th Century battleship
• Batana, the replica of a fishing smack from Rovinj in Istria
• Ladja, a traditional riverboat from the Neretva river
• Leut Slobodna Dalmacija (10 m), an authentic Dalmatian fishing boat from the 19th Century.

The Croatian Village will cover a surface area of 1000 m² and will include reconstructions of Dalmatian cottages.

Two thousand traditional sailing boats from 25 different countries will take part in the event, amongst them large Russian sailing boats like the Sedova (1923) and Kruzenshterna (1926), fishing boats or yachts and vessels of the national navy.

Brest 2004 attracted about 600 000 guests.

More about Sailing in Croatia  + Read the whole article about Croatia’s participation at Brest 2008 at this link : http://www.brest2008.fr/actualite/actualite.php?g_id_actualite=63&g_cle_actualite=exca10986570353xoa13200706