(Kiel, Germany)- With the MAIOR- MAY Offshore Regatta- the big boat
sailing season begins in Germany every year, the regatta season opener
for the sailing elite in Kiel. With 100 boats participating in this
year’s event, it was clear many teams were looking forward to getting
back onto the water after a very, very long, difficult winter ashore!
Amongst the regatta participants was a large fleet of twenty-four J/80s
sailing on the bay.
Almost
consistently, the best sailing weather greeted the sailors at the beach
and on the race-track north of Bülker Lighthouse. Sunshine and 10-17
kts NE winds greeted the fleet with nice waves rolling down the bay on
Friday, enough to get in three races for the J/80’s. By Saturday, the
day dawned brightly with promise of good winds, but these died off until
1500 hrs. At that point, the PRO’s on the one-design course wisely
waited for the newly developing breeze and managed to get in two more
races by early evening. On the finale on Sunday, the wind shifted to
WNW and challenged the RC PRO- Stefan Kunstmann- to once more display a
lot of skill at adapting the course to the changing conditions. In the
end they managed to get two more races off for the one-design fleets,
good enough for them to count 7 races in the 10 scheduled for the
weekend.The J/80s had an exciting duel until the very end. Before the last race, Martin Menzner and Sven Vagt were still head to head. Ultimately, the veteran Menzner from Kiel prevailed and won with the narrow margin of one point! Menzner won the last race while Vagt’s crew faltered and sailed their “drop race”, a sixth. In the end, Menzner’s and Vagt’s crew were sailing in a class by themselves. Menzner’s crew compiled a 1-1-3-2-1-2-1 record for 8 pts net while Vagt’s took a 2-2-1-1-2-1-6 for 9 pts net. A distant third was Soren Hadeler’s crew scoring a 6-4-2-3-3-4-3 for 19 pts net. The rest of the top five included Heinrichs Patrick in 4th and Bjorn Beilken in 5th. For more J/80 MAIOR Regatta sailing information
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