SAP 505 World Championships day two - New leaders

by Dansk Sejlunion on 1 Aug 2010 SAP 505 World Championships day two.

Wolfgang Hunger and Julien Kleiner have moved into the lead of the SAP 505 World Championships after dominating today’s race on day 2 in Aarhus, Denmark.

With the wind blowing 16-17 knots at the start, Hunger was watching the dark clouds flying over head as he weighed up his strategy for the gate start, the method used to start the 126 boats competing at this World Championship. Where most of the top teams like to start early out of the gate rather than wait for the pathfinder boat to sweep past on its 6-minute lonely journey on port tack, Hunger decided to bide his time.

'We saw the dark clouds on the right-hand side, and we knew the current was less on the right, so we started at about 4 minutes after the gun,' said Hunger, bidding to win his fourth 505 world title. 'Once we were out of the start we tacked on some of the wind shifts and we led around the mark.'

It was a handsome lead too, more than a minute by the end of the first lap, and after two hours of racing around the mammoth race track the Germans high-fived their way across the finish line, 1 minute 23 seconds ahead of the next boat. On that next boat were the Bojsen-Møller brothers from Denmark, Jorgen and Jacob. Hunger had been concerned that the Danes were perhaps a little quicker, although Jorgen never felt he could threaten the German lead today. 'But still we are quite satisfied,' said Jorgen, an Olympic Champion from his days racing the Flying Dutchman. 'Yesterday we didn’t sail so well in the strong breeze and downwind we were not so fast, but today everything was good.

'Our start could have been better, though,' he added. 'We started very early out of the gate, because we thought our speed was better than the pathfinder. We saw a cloud on the right hand side but decided to go left, which was not so good.' The brothers recovered well, though, moving into fourth at the first mark and making ground throughout the race. It was a happy day for Danish families, with son and father team, Nikolaj and Henrik Buhl, finishing in third behind the Bojsen-Møllers.

Americans Howie Hamlin and Andy Zinn are another team who prefer to start sooner than later out of the gate, but found themselves on the wrong side of the course as a result. 'We got the impression there was a right-hand shift on the first beat but we were never connected with the leaders,' said Zinn. Even so, they picked off boats during the two hours and hauled themselves up to ninth by the finish. They may have relinquished their lead in the series, but they’re still in third overall.

Britons Ian Pinnell and Ian Mitchell spent most of the race battling around the 10th place position but a late bid for the extreme right of the final beat launched them past some of their rivals to give them fourth across the finish line. 'We just decided to go hard right and while everyone else tacked under the layline for the finish, we got there in one go and took three boats right at the finish,' said Pinnell, the 2008 World Champion. This moves the Brits into second overall, 4 points behind Hunger’s lead and just a point ahead of the Americans.

Today’s race started in 16-17 knots and dropped off to 12-14 knots towards the end, but tomorrow it could be much lighter. Only five teams have kept all of their scores in the top 10 so far, and with the breeze dropping lighter they will be pleased to have banked some good numbers before the really tricky, tactical racing begins. One team that could really profit from a drop in wind strength are the recently crowned German National Champions, Meike Schoemaeker and Holger Jess, a male/female combo whose seventh place today has lifted them into ninth place overall. While they have sailed very well in the strong winds of the first two days, they will no doubt be looking forward to the lighter breeze even more.

The SAP 505 World Championship takes place in Aarhus, Denmark, from 30 July to 5 August. This regatta is the latest in a series of major sailing championships hosted by the City of Aarhus over the past 10 years, with the Volvo ISAF Youth Worlds having taken place here in 2008 and with a number of major championships scheduled in the near future, including the A-Class Catamaran Worlds in 2011.

The 2010 SAP 505 World Championship is organised by Sailing Aarhus in cooperation with Sport Event Denmark, Sport Aarhus Event and the Danish Sailing Association. With a strong focus on innovation and new technology to promote sailing to a wider audience, Denmark and the City of Aarhus are bidding for the ISAF Worlds 2014, the most prestigious regatta next to the Olympic Games.

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