Today, Tuesday, July 4, we crossed the finish line in this year's Gotland Runt about 13:20 about 49 hours after the start on Sunday. We succeeded very well and for the first time we won in Team Pro4u total Gotland Runt and also our class ORCi B.

We won in total with about 1 hour and 20 minutes before the second place on estimated time and only about 20 boats finished, see the results here: Overall results

We won our class ORCi B with just over 7 hours on the estimated time, see the results here: ORCi Class B Results

In total, of the 180 registered boats for this year's Gotland Runt, many (the majority) broke the race either before, given the forecasts of very strong winds, or during the race, probably because things broke, they felt insecure, had not trained in strong winds or suffered a lot of seasickness on board.

Here is one of the many things we in the crew appreciate a lot with our skipper Patrik Forsgren because even if we also knew that it would be a tough race, we knew that the boat "Malin" was in top condition and you trust that things hold and work even in hard weather with a lot of wind and waves. On board with us, there were never any thoughts of not starting and instead we tried to prepare ourselves before in the best possible way and fortunately everything held as it should and the boat worked perfectly. However, we also suffered from some seasickness and such is always tough to deal with, especially for the person affected.

We are very happy and proud of this overall victory in Gotland Runt and several of us on board have long experience with around 20 completed Gotland Runt most of us have been without overall victory until now. Then it will perhaps be extra special because this year's edition together with 1993 and 2019 goes down in history as among the windiest and this year more boats broke than ever before (as much as 87% have not come to the start or broken).

We have done a really good Gotland Runt with very good tactics and strategy that Peter Thorwid and Roger Nilson were responsible for. The iron gang Emil Forsgren and Zacharias Krafft were on the foredeck and mast. Keyboard was Emil Alnebeck and sail trim was done by Linnea Floser and the undersigned Anders Björk. Main sheet has the happy and talented Ålänningen Thomas Tennström handled (reserve for regular Sven) and finally Patrik Forsgren was helmsman and skipper.

This year's race began with the archipelago part, which is a fantastic part of Gotland Runt, starting in the middle of the city and then sailing out to Sandhamn with lots of boats and sometimes narrow passages. We started quite late and managed to overtake lots of boats until we got out on the sea outside Sandhamn. That part had quite light to medium winds and is completely different from what was waiting for us later on the sea. The part from the lighthouse Almagrundet to Hoburgen was the toughest this year and it was also here that most boats broke. It was mostly crossing or tacking in strong winds mostly around 25-30 knots with peaks a bit over 40 knots. It was cold, wet, tough and challenging with such a long distance all the time on the open sea, difficult to get proper rest and food. As usual when you then round Hoburgen, you get a nice feeling because now you are on your way home and we got a tailwind and everything gets better and easier on board. The first part up to Visby (we did not have to round the buoy in Visby this year, good decision by KSSS and maybe you can permanently ignore this rounding?) we drove our Jibtop with staysail and it went as usual stable and fine in the wind that continued to be around 25 knots. When we then passed Visby and could fall a few degrees, we had a discussion on board about whether we should run the spinnaker and since we were chasing the total, we bet and hoisted our full-sized S3 in 30 knots of wind (a reef on the main) and here began a fantastic rope up to Almagrundet where we spent the first few hours when the wind was usually between 28 and 34 knots and we went really fast with a couple of peaks of 21.2 knots (new speed record for the boat). This last long slog home is guaranteed to be remembered throughout life with great joy, fantastic to be able to go so fast with such a type of boat we have! Of course, it helps that we have trained quite a lot and many on board have experience of hard weather.

We also had a reporter on board during this year's race and we hope Saga had an OK time on board with us! We also want to thank KSSS for a very well conducted race and fun to also race in really hard weather that tests the limits of teams and boats and show that thorough preparation and training gives results and the race was really quite undramatic in a positive way for us on the whole and the atmosphere on board has been very good all the way.

Tomorrow evening there will be an award ceremony and regatta dinner in Sandhamn and almost the entire team will be there and it will be a fun experience!

Pictures from KSSS.

Text: Anders Björk (who started and completed all three windy Gotland Runt in 1993, 2019 and 2023).