Eight classes finished racing at Travemuende Week

by Andreas Kling on 23 Jul 2008
Sunny weather and light shifty wind greeted the sailors in 13 classes on Tuesday, the race day four of the 119th Travemuende Week. Eight classes celebrated their winners.

The ORC-European Championship of the Sport boats started with three races and some confusion about the course. The Czech Milan Hajek took the lead. In the International German Championship of the Olympic Tornado class it seems to end in a straight line of bullets for the German favourites Helge and Christian Sach, and the Folke boat crew of Christoph Nielsen looks sovereign in their fleet of 58 German Championship boats.

After some breeze in the morning, the wind died right after lunch and picked up a bit again in the afternoon when three out of six courses continued racing on the Luebeck Bay off Travemuende, Germany. In the ORC-European Championship of the Sportboat class the results had been rather up and down.

'The wind was very shifty and one of the four races had to be cancelled due to a big shift', said Bart Leerling from the Dutch team of the Max Fun 25 'MXTC' who ranks seventh after three races. At the end of the day the helmsmen from Prague, Czech Republic took the lead with 'Radost II', defending his first place against his countryman Alexander Tinocco with 'Bohemia Express' (both Melges 24), followed by two Max Funs 25 from the Netherlands.

The Tornado class managed three races in the fickle breeze. The brothers Helge and Christian Sach from Zarnekau (Germany) underlined their ambitions to celebrate their 14th Travemuende Week victory this year. Like a Swiss chronograph they crossed the finish line five times in a row in front of their 37 competitors.

They lead the International German Championship by six points, followed by the Swiss Martin Rusterholz/Sebastian Moser. 'It is not as easy on the water as it looks like on the paper', said Christian Sach, 'the others give us a hard time'. And the results could read differently if not the Russian team Alexey Chekrygin and Valeriy Seleznev had to skip the first two races due to a lack of insurance.

The German Championship of the Folke boats feared to get boring, watching the dominance of the Team Christoph Nielsen/Torben Dehn/Krzystof Paschke but in race four the fleet took revenche and saw three boats crossing the line in front of Nielsen. He is now leading by ten points to second placed Martin and Rainer Rehbehn with Martin Kringel from Kiel, Germany.

The prize-giving saw happy winners in the classes Int. Canoe IC, Int. Canoe Taifun; Laser, Laser SB3, Europe, Pirat, O-Jolle, Schwertzugvogel and Trias.

On Wednesday the second leg of the Baltic Sprint Cup, that took its offbeat on Saturday during the Travemuende Week, will start its way from Karlskrona, Sweden to Klaipeda, Lithuania.

Event website - www.travemuender-woche.de