Baltic Offshore Week 2016 kicked off with a long offshore race

Baltic Offshore Week regatta which is also considered as the Estonian and Finnish ORC Championships was kicked off with a 52-miles long offshore race in Kalev Yacht Club, Tallinn Estonia, on Friday, June 17th. This regatta has been held yearly on the both shores of the Finnish Gulf since 2008.

43 offshore sailing teams – 21 from Finland and 22 from Estonia experienced a beautiful sunshine, strong wind with gusts, pouring rain and lack of wind during 8-10 hrs long offshore race. To get the best results a good knowledge and experience about the weather conditions and a bit of luck was highly needed.

The boats of the ORC A group, where there are 16 boats competing, were on the water from eight to nine and a half hours. The top podium places were taken by strong Finnish teams, who have enough experience and titles to display. The best corrected time was achieved by the 2012 and 2014 X-41 World Champion Normet FIN19 with Aaro Cantell helming. Only nine seconds behind as second was Tapani Sura’s team on boat Bella del Mare (First 40) from Finland. 2015 European A-B group bronze, Martin Estlander’s   Xini-Freedom (X-41) from Finland was following with 6 seconds behind. The best Estonian team in the offshore race was Lady Bird from Pärnu Yacht Club with Johannes Puusepp helming – their loss to the third position was three seconds only. Lady Bird seemed to be in the least hopeful situation after between the start and first mark, but then the wind conditions changed in favour of them bringing the boat to the first mark with a great margin ahead of the other competitors and they did not lose the advantage until the end of the course. Better starts and speed in the beginning of the race were the keywords to be safe from the wind holes during the later part of the course. These holes created near to one hour spaces between the finish times.  2015 A-B group European Champion Forte (X-41) with Jaak Jõgi’s team and the silver from the same group, Priit Tammemägi’s Premium (X-41) with Mati Sepp helming were respectively sixth and seventh.

In ORC B group among the 23 competitors got both the best elapsed and corrected time My-Car (X-35) team with experienced Andres Laul at the helm. My Car was the winner of the 2014 Baltic Offshore Week and their spent time on the water was almost nine hours. The second best time was achieved by Erkki Heinonen’ WE 2 / Sokos Hotel (First 35) from Finland. 2013 European Champion and 2014 European fourth in C group, Aivar Tuulberg’s Katariina II from Pärnu Yacht Club sailed to the third place. The team members of Katariina II were happy about the position as the tricky conditions made the sailing very challenging. They said having lots of luck ending up as the third. Some very hopeless situations turned in their favour and reaching to the better wind just approaching to the finish brought them to the top three boats. The places from the fourth to six were filled with the teams from the local Kalev Yacht Club – 2015 ORC European fifth in C group, Amserv Toyota Sailing Team (First 36.7) with Margus Zuravljov helming as fourth; 2015 European fourth in the same group Jazz (First 34.7) with Juss Ojala steering as fifth;   and 2015 European seventh, Brigitta-X (X-34) with Aleksandr Karboinov at the helm as sixth.

Baltic Offshore Race Day One  – Photos by Max Ranchi   www.MaxRanchi.com