(Lidingo, Sweden)- The Around Lidingo Island Race was first organized by
the Lidingo YC in 1949 as a small competition amongst friends to have
some fun in the early part of the Swedish summertime. The start is
below Foresta / Millesgarden and the finish is at Old Torsviks
lighthouse, north of Lidingobron.For the first few years around fifty or so boats sailed, but the numbers began to increase quite rapidly. During the 2000s, the race had about 400 to 450 participating boats. The event is the start of the season for many East Coast sailors in Sweden. In fact, the race has grown in such popularity that even Super Maxi 100 footers, Open 60s and 80 ft trimarans have participated for honors of "first around Lidingo"!
This year, a modest fleet of 280+ boats registered to sail the event, including a very strong class of a dozen J/80s sailing one design. It also marked the debut of the first J/70 to participate in this famous "round island" race.
The J/80s saw the event as the first part of their training program to get teams ready to sail the J/80 Worlds in Marseilles, France as well as the J/80 Europeans. Leading the pack home were the HAPPY team led by Johannnes Bergh. Second was the DYNAMANT Consulting team with skipper Anders Rosenberg several minutes behind. Third was MK-PRODUKTER sailed by Lars Gellerhed. Fourth was the HEAVY DUTY crew doing heavy duty work for skipper Pontus Tornlund. Rounding out the top five was TEAM SEGER led by Andreas Seger.
Sailing in by far one of the largest classes in the fleet was J/70 JULIA! With next to no practice and little knowledge of how to make the J/70 go fast, it was amazing the Jan Nillson managed to skipper the J/70 to a third overall in their SRS-1 Handicap class against 23 other competitors. For more Lidingo Runt sailing information
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