2025 Garmin ORC World Championship Day 5 - Short offshore race on penultimate day

by Offshore Racing Congress 15 Aug 17:02 PDT 8-16 August 2025

Today's return to racing at the 2025 Garmin ORC World Championship was on the Short offshore race powered by PANTAENIUS, featuring close racing in all three classes on courses of 47.4 miles for Class A, 41.8 miles for Class B and 33.6 miles for Class C. Wind conditions were quite varied, from as low as 8 knots to as high as 20 knots, and shifty enough to challenge the fleet for close tactical racing throughout the 5-6 hour durations of each race in each class.

For Class A the team on Niklas Zennstrom's Carkeek Fast 40+ RAN (SWE) replicated their performance in the first Long offshore race of the series by leading the pack of 8 entries around all 10 marks of the course set in and just north of Tallinn Bay. For the first two hours of this race second and third place in the standings were traded between Jani Lehti's GP 42 MERCEDES BENZ (FIN) and Torben Muhlbach's Carkeek 47 STOERTEBEKER (GER), with only seconds separating them in corrected time even though they were a mile apart on the water.

Class A start on Tallinn Bay - 2025 Garmin ORC World Championship - photo © Mauro Melandri / Kalev Yacht Club

By the halfway point in the race other contenders had also entered and exited the top three, including Mati Sepp's Eco 44 CLEAN ENERGY (EST) and the Long offshore race winner Maciej Gnatowski's HH 42 SCAMP THREE (POL) with none ever more than a few minutes apart in corrected time. While starting the fifth hour of the race on the upwind leg to Naissar CLEAN ENERGY had even briefly taken the lead from RAN by a 1 minute margin.

However, by the last short downwind leg in Tallinn Bay RAN regained the lead and stretched it to an uncatchable 12 minutes by the finish, with MERCEDES BENZ taking second place and CLEAN ENERGY third.

RAN showing winning form - 2025 Garmin ORC World Championship - photo © Mauro Melandri / Kalev Yacht Club

"We knew that we had to have a good coastal race to have a good chance of going into tomorrow with a chance of winning the World Championship, " said RAN tactician Adrian Stead. So we made a great start, good first beat and the first run was 10 miles downwind with the spinnaker. We had some really good wind shifts, we sailed the boat well and had a nice lead at the bottom of the course."

"There's some great competition here," he continued. "We're racing our boat under IRC and ORC this year, and we're not really optimized for ORC, but we knew we can sail the boat well so we know we can get the best out of it."

WINDWHISPER being chased by eXciteR in close Class B racing - 2025 Garmin ORC World Championship - photo © Janis Spurdzins | Kalev Yacht Club

In Class B the first half of their race was dominated by the three new XR 41's: Jesper Radich's XR 41 FORMULA X (DEN), Erik Stannow's DIXI 5 (DEN) and Jens Kuphal's eXciteR (GER). Unlike in the Long offshore race on Monday and Tuesday when FORMULA X was trading their lead in that race with the reigning Class B World Champion - Marcin Sutkowski's Grand Soleil 44P WINDWHISPER (POL) - the larger Polish boat did not crack into the top three until briefly at 3:15 into race while on their way upwind from the Tallinnamadal lighthouse to the Naissaar North buoy.

On this long upwind leg the sailing was close and tactical, with another another top contender breaking into the top three a half hour later just prior to the mark rounding: Jaak Jogi's X-41 FORTE (EST). Yet from this point forward to the finish of the race it was DIXI 5 and eXciteR in control of the top two positions, making the remainder of the race a fight for third, which FORMULA X wrested away from WINDWHISPER with about an hour left in the race and keeping this order all the way to the finish.

DIXI 5 taking the lead in Class B - 2025 Garmin ORC World Championship - photo © Mauro Melandri | Kalev Yacht Club

"We are super happy," said Stannow. "We've had the XR41 for seven weeks now and we worked very hard to get it to be fast and today we showed that it can be fast. And we also showed that FORMULA X being a great team are not invincible and neither is WINDWHISPER, so we are upbeat and super optimistic about tomorrow."

SUGAR enjoying the early lead in Class C - 2025 Garmin ORC World Championship - photo © Mauro Melandri | Kalev Yacht Club

In Class C the race was dominated for the first half by Ott Kikkas's Italia 9.98 SUGAR (EST) with a revolving door of others in second and third places giving chase in corrected time. These included the series leader - Patrik Forsgren's modified First 36.7 GARMIN TEAM PRO4U (SWE) - Alar Volmer's X-35 CHERIE (EST), Aivar Tuulberg's Arcona 340 KATARIINA II (EST) and Anders Helmrich's Farr 30 CHEYENNE (SWE) and Margus Žuravljov's modified First 36.7 AMSERV TOYOTA ST.

However, it was on the long beat south to the Keskmadal East buoy that SUGAR fell precipitously from the top of leaderboard, never able to recover, leaving the last hour of the race as a fight between KATARIINA, AMSERV and PRO4U for the lead. KATARIINA won that fight by a margin of only 01:32 minutes over PRO4U after 5:34 hours of racing.

Guided by tactician Lorenzo Bodini, KATARIINA II scored their first win of the series - 2025 Garmin ORC World Championship - photo © Mauro Melandri | Kalev Yacht Club

"This was quite an interesting race, and one that was really important for all of us," said Karl-Hannes Tagu, helmsman on KATARIINA II. "There was lots of transitions, changes in wind speed, it was a great challenge in all sailing angles: upwind, downwind and reaching."

With a windy forecast for tomorrow promising as much as 20-30 knots and multiple inshore races on the schedule the teams are preparing for what could be a raucous showdown of final racing to determine the new ORC World Champions in each class. After two races are completed then the standings could change considerably because each team will discard their worst score in the inshore series - the offshore races are non-discardable.

PANTAENIUS Short offshore race winners RAN - 2025 Garmin ORC World Championship - photo © Janis Spurdzins | Kalev Yacht Club

Currently RAN leads Class A by 4 points over MERCEDES BENZ, who in turn is 5 points ahead of CLEAN ENERGY. In Class B FORMULA X leads WINDWHISPER by 5 points, who in turn leads DIXI 5 by 4 points. And in Class C GARMIN TEAM PRO4U has the largest of any class lead, 9 points clear of KATARIINA, who is in turn 2 points ahead of CHEYENNE.

So with two and possibly three races ahead in tomorrow's breezy conditions it will be all to play for in Tallinn on ALTER MARINE inshore race day, the last day of competition in the 2025 Garmin ORC World Championship.