All preparations are now done and tomorrow the ORC Worlds starts here in Kiel. Today we did a practice race and after two general recalls at the start unfortunately we started too early and was disqualified but the good thing was it was only for practice.
Tomorrow the plan was for the long offshore race to start estimated at around 30 hours sailing but unfortunately the weather forecast predict heavy winds up to 50 knots in the gusts so the organizers have decided to change the schedule and tomorrow do a shorter coastal race of around two hours. In one way we feel this is too bad given we perform usually quite well in those windy conditions offshore but in one way you can also understand the organizers decision to make this change.
We will of course do everything we can to sail as good as we can tomorrow and then we will see how the organizers will adapt the schedule and when the long offshore race will be planned. The forecasts predicts quite a lot of wind to Wednesday but maybe slightly less than on Monday evening/night.
After some rest after Gotland Runt early July (where we managed to win overall) we are now getting ready for this seasons most important race being the ORC World Championship in Kiel Germany starting next weekend. "Malin" is on its way to Kiel and the rest of the crew will meet in Kiel mid next week for some practice and preparations before the Worlds starts.
There are around 120 participating boats in the World Championship and we have around 70 boats in Class C. See more about the Worlds and who is coming here: ORC Worlds.
We have good memories from the last Worlds we participated in, Tallinn 2021, where we came third in the open class and won the corinthian class. Once again we will meet Matilda 4 and Sugar 3 who came in front of us in the open class during the last Worlds (and all the rest of the boats) and we will do our best to try to beat them this time!
For this Worlds there are some changes and there will be less focus on up/down courses and we may instead do a coastal race almost every day but we will see how they plan things. As before, Worlds will start with a long offshore race over night with start on next Monday morning. There are five Swedish boats in Class C and two in Class B so overall 7. We will provide regular updates especially during the Worlds.
After a much-needed night's rest, it was time for the award ceremony and regatta dinner on Wednesday after our overall victory and class win in this year's Gotland Runt. We had (almost) the entire team and a lot of respective which was fun. Picture below from the pre-drink before the award ceremony.
The award ceremony was unexpectedly crowded, which was great!
There were several nice prizes and we got a total of three traveling trophies that will now have Team Pro4u engraved / added, one for class victory in ORCi B, Hoburgen price and finally the finest trophy for Total Win. The trophies in the center below in the picture.
Top row from left: Martin Hedberg (meteorologist ashore), Patrik Forsgren, Roger Nilson and Anders Björk. Bottom row from left: Peter Thorwid, Thomas Tennström, Linnea Floser, Zacharias Krafft and Emil Forsgren (missing from the picture Emil Alnebeck).
Even our meteorologist Martin Hedberg, who we have received very good help from and who we will continue to collaborate with also over the World Cup, was with us during the evening, which was fun.
Finally, there was a regatta dinner and then some dancing.
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).
Gotland Runt starts tomorrow and the forecasts contain a lot of wind so it looks like a pretty fast and wet race. We start in the ORCi B class at 12:20 and KSSS has a broadcast from the start. Please follow us during the race and on the KSSS Gotland Runt page you can read more about how to follow us.
Today the Baltic Offshore Week and Estonian and Finnish Offshore Sailing Championship in Helsinki ended with three inshore races in very windy conditions with +20 knots of wind and sunshine. We finished overall in third place in Class B. Overall, during the 5 races during BOW we have had the series 2, 1.4, 3, (4) and 4 with a total of 10.4 after one race was discarded (and offshore race had weight 1.4). We congratulate Katarina 2 to first place and Sugar to second place, both from Estonia!
Due to lack of wind first day this years regatta was reduced to two days. On Saturday with light winds we sailed one inshore race where we came second and then we had a longer offshore race for approximately 6 hours where we won. Yesterday we were very pleased overall with our sailing. Today Sunday we had three inshore races and we did not sail equally well and also had difficulties matching the speed of the two Estonian boats that were in the lead today. But overall very good training for us in the team and we have not had so much practice this year in +20 knots of wind so very useful experience before the Worlds.
We want to thank the Finnish hosts for a good regatta. We hope that we will be able to come back to BOW another year.
During the national day weekend we have raced Sandhamn Open. This year it was divided into two separate races, on Saturday four track races and then starting in the middle of Sunday a longer sea race of 121 nm which for our part took just over 20 hours with a finish after 8 am this morning. The weekend has offered brilliant fine weather with light winds with beautiful moon and nature - sailing propaganda!
We did very well and on Saturday we won the course race in the ORCi class with the series (1), 1, 1 and 1 with a total of 3 and only spikes! Today when the ocean race ended we also won it, both in our ORCi class and overall. In the total list of 26 starting boats at the ocean race we won by about 20 minutes on corrected time.
All results via links can be found here on the KSSS page: Results
Throughout the weekend we have sailed stable and good with very good tactics, maneuvers and speed in the boat and made few mistakes. We are very happy with our weekend and this has been very good preparation for us for the World Championships later this year.
We also thank KSSS for organizing the Sandhamn Open and everything has worked very well with courses, information and everything around the races!
The next race for us will now be the Baltic Offshore Race (BOW), which this year takes place in Helsinki in two weeks, which is also the Finnish and Estonian Championships. It will be our third year in a row we participate in this and it usually becomes a good race with qualified opposition, especially from the Estonian boats that are among the best in our class.
Pictures from KSSS, sailors at SO and from Team Pro4u.
Today we raced the Seapax Viggan Open on Trälhavet. The weather today was again brilliantly fine but very variable light winds. There were 4 races with 14 participating boats. We managed after good sailing to win the series 1, 2, (4), 1 with a total of 4 points in the ORC class. Close behind on the same points and with very small time differences was the Farr 40 Stormtrooper.
We are very grateful to the race management for Viggan Open for arranging this nice race for us and especially today with all the wind shifts it is really well done to get 4 whole races!
This weekend we sailed with our regular crew this season and it has gone really well and we look forward with confidence to the rest of the season, next is Sandhamn Open national day weekend.
We came second in total today of about 110 registered boats at Lidingö Runt. We also came second in our class and we were also the second boat to finish. Congratulations to Grynet who took home the victory both in total and in our class!
Today's race was challenging with shifting and light winds with lots of sail changes. It was good training for us! Although there are a lot of things we can improve, we often found the wind that was there and took us around Lidingö in a good way. Tomorrow there will be track sailing at Viggan Open!
This weekend we start racing with Malin and Team Pro4u will participate in Lidingö Runt on Saturday and then Viggan Open on Sunday. As always, it will be fun to get started for real and these are important training races for us.
During the pre-season we have trained a lot and as usual made some improvements and trained new people in the team. We have also had very good help from Joca Signorini as a coach on some sessions. We have both run some on the Baggen and also been out in Sandhamn and run some sea sessions. We will have two good additions this season and Linnea Floser will join in a trim role and then Roger Nilson will return as a strategist / navigator during at least Gotland Runt and the World Cup - welcome to both!
This year's big goal for us is, as usual, the international ORC championship and in August the World Cup in Kiel and there are already more than 70 boats registered for our class C and well over 100 boats in total. In addition to that, we also run Sandhamn Open, we go to Helsinki for Baltic Offshore Week and Gotland Runt.
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