Øresund Rally for Cruisers - Social Sailing with a taste of Tirol

by Henrik Jørgensen on 23 Sep 2015 Øresund Rally for Cruisers - ØRC - has evolved into an outstanding and wildly creative Danish sailing festival. This year ØRC was the fifth edition of the race and was held Saturday 19th September 2015 in Øresund, the quite narrow sound that separates Denmark and Sweden.

Everybody (including the boats) was dressed up to party and people of all ages participated in the race from Copenhagen to Malmö (17 nautical miles), including pirates, sheiks, bees, green men and sharks. This year was especially inspired by Hansi Hinterseer and gave Danish sailors a great excuse to flash their lederhosen and play loud German Schlager music in Sweden.

ØRC is not just about winning the race (which everybody of course try to do) but most important is participating and be a part of the all night sailors party. Many crew show their creativity and dress up in various themes. All this to have a lot of fun and having a nice day and evening in the company of hundreds of other sailors.

Navigation in the sound itself showed to be chapter of its own. Two boats ran on ground and one very special boat had to have four people controlling the boat (one at the helmet, one in the stern and one on the bow thruster … this was due to the serious construction on top of the boat which totally transformed it to a German after-skiing bar.

A general trend at the ØRC is that it gets crazier and crazier every year. This year boats from Denmark, Sweden, Norway and UK participated but a present the more than 500 sailors is what the 'Glasklart' event centre in Malmö Harbour can handle.

This year's ØRC edition was the biggest sailing event in Denmark to date with 130 boats and 520 sailors with full party power.

Not surprisingly, all participants was kind of tired this morning, and after arriving to our different Danish homeports to get some sleep … and then begin to prepare for next year event?