Sandhamn – After a day and night of offshore racing in the Baltic to complete a short and long offshore course, the three classes of the Avantime ORC European Championship have finished this morning and give some new team names to the event leaderboard.
Principal Race Officer Eckart Reinke described the steady southeast breeze as “spectacular, really perfect for an offshore race. The direction held steady all night, and the staggered starts for the classes meant that everyone came through the scoring gate at about 7:00 PM. Everyone then had a beautiful spinnaker run back towards the coast as the sun set. I think everyone was very happy with this course.”
The long 40-mile leg to the first scoring gate at Sanskobb was a near-fetch, with 15-20 knots of wind at 150° on a course heading of 180°, giving boats with strong upwind performance an edge in the results, which were scored with the same points weighting as an inshore race.
Accordingly, among the 10 boats in Class 1 Ole Martin Vordahl’s Norwegian Cookson 50 Camilla with its canting keel got to the turning mark just 2 minutes behind the elapsed time leader, Thomas Nilsson’s Norwegian TP 52 Trucknor Wolfpack, but corrected to just over 7 minutes ahead to take their first victory of the series.
In the 20 boats in Class 2 the results were much closer, with the big boats in the class having a slight advantage in the conditions. So, Rickard Bergkvist’s Swedish IMX-40 FoxyLady was 18 minutes behind the first rounding boat, Ralf Lassig’s German XP-44 Xenia, but won this race on corrected time by only 50 seconds.
But in Class 3 with its 30 boats it was a smaller boat, Patrik Frosgren’s Swedish First 36.7 Team Arken Zoo, that managed to correct over the class inshore race leader, Mikhel Kosk’s Estonian NM 38 Sugar 2 by an even smaller margin: 20 seconds.
The next phase of racing was to the finish line of the long offshore race, which combined the length of the short length plus some additional legs which varied for each class. Class 1 had another 113 miles to sail for a total length of 153 miles, while Class 2 sailed for another 58 miles for a total of 98 miles, and Class 3 raced for another 44 miles for a total of 44 miles. The long offshore race was worth 1.5 points, and cannot be discarded from any team’s final scores in the event.
Winning this race in Class 1 was once again Camilla, by an impressive margin of 15 minutes over Trucknor, while in Class 2 it was Juss Ojala’s Estonian team on their GS 42R Amserv that came back to win by only 47 seconds over Bengt Falkenberg’s First 40 Teknova/Albatross. And in Class 3 Team Arken Zoo managed to not only stay ahead but extend their lead over Sugar 2 to an impressive margin of over 14 minutes in corrected time.
These results now have Trucknor retaining their lead in Class 1 by 3.5 points, but with a new runner-up in Camilla. In Class 2 the series lead has now shifted to Teknova/Albatross with a 9-point lead over the earlier series leader, Priit Tammemagi’s X-41 Premium, and in Class 3 Team Arken Zoo now has taken the lead from Sugar 2, but by only a 1.5 point margin.
Racing resumes tomorrow in the Avantime ORC European Championship, with two inshore races planned, the first to start at 11:00 local time.
For info and results click here.
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