Wednesday, June 15, 2011

J/22s Love North Sea Regatta

J/22 one-design sailboat- spinnake sailing downwind
(The Hague, The Netherlands)- Popular with the German and Netherlands J/22 teams and highlight of the summer sailing season is the Delta Lloyd North Sea Regatta.  It's a huge event and popular with one-design sailors throughout Europe.  Boats range from Lasers and 420s and 49ers to Tornados and F-18s to large IRC offshore racer-cruisers.

The J/22s showed up in force with sixteen boats participating this year in reasonably nice sailing conditions.  This year there was a dominating performance registered by Ron Veraar on NDED 1450.  Ron's team simply sailed away from the competition after getting two early bad races, a 6th and an OCS in race 3.  Nevertheless, Veraar ended up with a nine race record of 2-6-ocs-1-2-1-1-1-2 for 10 pts (two toss races).  Second was Eelco Blok,  although winning after the first day of racing, sailed a very consistent series with a 1-ocs-1-4-1-2-2-3-6 for 14 pts.   Third was Menno Bron who lost a tie-breaker with Blok, sailing to a 5-1-2-2-3-3-3-2-1 for 14 pts, without toss races, Menno easily had won the regatta due to getting no OCS's and having to only toss a 5th and a 3rd!    For more J/22 Delta-Lloyd North Sea Regatta sailing information