Team Pro4u winners of both ÅFIR and their class at ÅFOR and 10th overall!
Team Pro4u, competing for KSSS, sails a First 36.7 under skipper Patrik Forsgren's direction. Last Saturday the team competed in ÅF Inshore Race and then on Sunday started "Gotland Runt", ÅF Offshore Race. The team first managed to win ÅFIR and then their class at ÅFOR.
As a good upload and run-through before Gotland Runt we competed as usual in ÅF Inshore Race last Saturday where things went really nicely for us in the easy slowly increasing winds and we managed to win the race with about 50 participating boats.
"For me who was new to this boat, it was really good to get this race before the offshore race started and we usually managed to find a road-winning choice and the team has good track of how to get good speed on the boat," said Klas Winter tactics.
Then ÅF started offshore race in the middle of Sunday and we competed in the class ORCi class C with 16 boats. After a perfectly ok but not perfect start it was at first a very nice archipelago sailing with light winds and nice weather with lots of boats where we largely sailed well and we came out of the archipelago with the lead in the class and "hang" on several faster boats.
The passage in ox depth was quite special as it was thick with boats in the strait when we arrived but we found a good track along the port country and we had other boats less than a meter from us, but we got through well relatively others," says Johanna Sommarlund trim.
Then it carried off out to sea and around the rounding of Alma increased and twisted the wind and in the end it became a stretch shoulder south with steadily increasing wind and some waves. We could run on with genoa for a while but then at about 25 knots wind (after first taking a reef) we started switching to the fock and just then the wind quickly increased even more and suddenly when our foredeck worked on the boot we had about 40 knots wind and to change sail si that wind in the dark and hefty sea lake is no easy thing.
Fantastic work of our foredeck to change sails in them in almost standing in water and at that moment also the life jacket solved out which did not make the job easier, this sail change is probably something that will etch itself firmly in my memory, says Sven Eriksson Trim.
Further down the outside of Gotland there was then more and more still cross in quite a real wind right down to Hoburgen. We rounded Hoburgen Monday afternoon after about 31 hours of sailing and in daylight making it easier to find the dot to round there.
Then we headed north / home and now it was half wind towards Visby still really drawn and with waves. We approached Visby at night in the dark and we finally had the opportunity to put spinnakers.
It was cool when we in the dark and +25 knots wind and sea lake as the only boat of those we saw around us put the spinnaker and were able to surf away at a real speed towards Visby. Here you see the value of the training we have done and everyone knew their roles / responsibility and what to do and although you did not see much (e.g. the color of the tampas) and Visby harbour approached quite quickly, it did not feel like there was any danger at all but just fun, says the signed on trim.
Then after rounding in Visby it became half wind again and basically rhumb line up towards Alma. Conditions continued to be quite counterto with a lot of wind, lake and after a while rain came too, as if it were not enough already with the recurring floods from the waves. In conclusion, it was incredibly wet, cold and generally challenging conditions that have been going on for a long time. The crew did not have many, if any, dry part on their clothes, three vests had loosed out and the rain increased.
It was actually really tough conditions and we then heard that this race was compared to 1993 which was also tough and one can understand in a way that about 100 boats broke with seasickness and problems on the boats in the harsh conditions that prevailed for a long time But for us everything was doing well and there were never any thoughts of breaking even though some in our crew also suffered moderate seasickness, says Christian Hadenius the rorsman.
As if it wasn't enough, it also twisted so we got crosses well up towards Alma and in from Alma the last bit and some of the crew but experience from many Gotland Runt has probably rarely longed so much until we could finally reach and round Alma.
We then finished at about half past six on Tuesday afternoon really tired after barely 53 hours of sailing but happy that everything went well, that everything on the boat kept and to be able to state that we sailed fast and managed to win the class about 1.5 hours before the runner-up at estimated time. We also came 10th overall, first "slow/non-leveling" boat.
The results of ÅFIR can be found here: https://race.ksss.se/Documents/AFOR2019/Resultat-AFIR-2019-04.htm
The results of ÅFOR Klass ORCi C can be found here: https://race.ksss.se/Documents/AFOR2019/ORCi/Results/06-Finish-C-05.html
The results of ÅFOR SRS In total can be found here: https://race.ksss.se/Documents/AFOR2019/AFOR2019-Resultat-Total-01.pdf
In conclusion, I am very pleased that although there was a lot of reaching going this year, we could win the ORCi class we competed in. We are also very grateful that our experienced pre-decker for many years, Joakim Hoppe, this year received the award as the best driver and in this race he showed again why he is so important to us in the team and well worth that award, says Patrik Forsgren , skipper and rorsman.
The team of 9 people who drove ÅFIR/ÅFOR for Team Pro4u this year were:
- Joakim Hoppe, Foredeck, Strategy & Navigation
- Anders Björk, Trim
- Christian Hadenius, Rorsman
- Sven Eriksson, Trim
- Axel Antas-Bergkvist, Mast
- Johanna Sommarlund, Trim
- Patrik Forsgren, Skipper & Rorsman
- Emil Forsgren, Keyboard
- Class Winter, Tactics
Finally, we would like to thank KSSS for another well-implemented arrangement and a very nice regatta dinner! We also congratulate all the other class winners. Now a few weeks holiday for the "Malin" gang awaits before we meet again for some training before the Swedish Championships in Sandhamn in early August followed by this year's big goal European Championships in Oxelösund.
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Text: Anders Björk. Photo: Team Pro4u