Esbo Segelförening Wins Finnish J/70 Sailing League 2020

 

(Mariehamn, Finland)- Of all the sailing leagues in Europe, perhaps it was the Scandinavian countries that were affected the most by the effects of the pandemic and the "social distancing" guidelines issued by their respective countries. With the most "open", and no doubt riskiest, policies, only Sweden managed to sail more than two events. In the case of Finland, their league managers could only pull off a single event before the rising and setting sun all but disappeared in regions of the Arctic Circle! Nevertheless, the dozen teams from across Finland enjoyed an exhausting twenty races over two days.


Fast out-of-the-blocks was Esbo Segelförening (ESF) winning five of their first nine races on the first day! They were never challenged after that opening gambit, handling winning the event despite averaging 4.5 pts in their last four races. As a result, ESF was declared champion of the Finnish Sailing League 2020. 

"We’re feeling great. We’ve been training for this for a couple of years on the J/70, and this year we managed to sail much more consistent races”, said ESF skipper Lucas Karlemo. His crew consisted of Victor Mesterton, Anton Eklund, and Emil Lindblom.


The silver medals were awarded to the regatta host Åländska Segelsällskapet (ÅSS 1), their team consisted of skipper Daniel Mattsson, Mathias Dahlman, Staffan Lindberg, and Jasper Karlsson. Amazingly, despite 15 podium finishes out of 20 races, they still could not close the gap on ESF!

Earning the bronze medal in a very tightly fought battle was Brändö Seglare (BS 2). It was not until the final race that skipper Ville Korhonen and his crew of Edi Bremer, Tusse Tallberg, and Jari Bremer overcame the strong challenge from the team sailing for Nylandska Jaktklubben; only beating them by one point!  Sailing Photo credits: Pepe Korteniemi / Suomen Purjehdusliiga 2020  For more Finnish J/70 Sailing League regatta informationAdd to Flipboard Magazine.