(Glucksburg, Germany)- The Flensburger Forde Week in Germany has always
been a popular end of summer finale on the Baltic Sea. This year it
featured for the first time the J/70 class along with all the others,
like the J/80s, ORC and several other one-design classes. The regatta
was sailed from September 12th to 13th. The J/70s and J/80s each sailed
five races; Saturday four races with winds between 12 to 20 kts. Then,
on Sunday only one race because of so very little winds.For the J/70s, their inaugural participation had eight boats sailing, all very good teams. The field included Bjorn Beilken, a 4th place finisher in the J/80 Worlds. The racing was very, very close amongst the top five teams.
After five races over the weekend of sailing, it was Christian Soyka’s team (Ole Stucker, Tim Kramer, Moritz Burmester) from SV Itzehoe that won with a steady 2-2-5-1-4 record for a total of 9 pts net to win the cliff-hanging tie-breaker. Losing that exchange was Gorden Nickel’s crew (Nils-Mathes Fiege, Nils Merten Farber, Nick Sclomka) from Segler-Vereeniging Wister who, unfortunately, took a DNF in the last race. Taking third place was Erik Schlaaff and crew (Tom Piesker, Steffen Naumann, Robert Kolsch) from YC Berlin Grunau, coming on strong in the end with a 5-3-1-6-1 record for 10 pts net to win the third place tiebreaker! Losing that match was Bjorn Beilken’s team on GER 862. Sitting by themselves in 5th position was Marwin Outzen with just 13 pts net from Flensburger SC. Top women’s skipper was Theresa Blumroth also from FSC in 7th place with her crew of Km Hedffedl, Antonia Hoch-Bauer, Theresa Blumroth and Rebecca Dehler.
Simultaneous, the J/80s were sailing their German Open Nationals with a fleet of seventeen boats. Again, another highly competitive fleet like their J/70 brothers. Nevertheless, after sailing the J/22, J/24 and J/80 Worlds, Martin Menzner was quite ready to finally win a regatta. This time, he succeeded, taking the German Nationals with nearly a race to spare- piling up an impressive scoreline of 1-1-2-1-2-6-1 for 8 pts net. His crew of Frank Lichte, Mika Rolfs from Sweden’s KSSS and Nils Beltermann were an enormous factor in their dominating performance.
Never able to overcome that hail of bullets was Hauke Kruss (with crew of Ole Sartori, Jens Tschentscher and Mattias Wallentin), having to work hard to remain in the silver on the podium with an erratic, roller-coaster tally of 2-7-3-8-1-1-2 for 16 pts net. Third position was Martin Christiansen’s team (Henrike Rolf, Andreas Hengstmann, Ullrich Tesch) with 23 pts net. Fritz Wassner’s crew (Paula Schaelke, Max Kleinsorg, Thore Petersen) took 4th place over the top Danish team of skippered by Johnny Jensen from Sonderborg YC. Sailing photo credits- Sven Jurgensen For more Flensburger Forde Woche sailing information
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