Regatta Report
Wittensee Fight 1/2. May 2010 (GER)
This year saw a spectacular turn out at
the Wittensee Fight, in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
A total of 9 boats showed up on saturday morning, which
is a rather significant increase over 3 in the previous
year and none in 2008!
The Wittensee Fight has a history of peculiar
weather conditions and it was no different this year,
wind claiming many ship wrecked on Saturday and being
practically un-sailably light on Sunday.
While rigging the boats, conditions on
Saturday morning were uninviting with temperatures of
about 8C and light rain. The wind was blowing south-westerly
with about 20-25 knots. Lake Wittensee a sizeable lake
(4km x 5km), waves had the opportunity to build considerably
towards the leeward end, many people taking this as
an opportunity to do their first ever full on "over
the handle bars"….
Now to Saturdays racing: A total of 7
boats went afloat for first race, while the remaining
2, very sensible Musto Skiff novices decided that eating
cake and drinking coffee ashore was the more sensible
option. As race one got underway, the conditions, and
early season tame muscles, called its victims. All in
all, the wind resulted in a deck face plant (luckily
only scuffs on the forehead) and a bent (yes, someone
was using aluminium) tiller extension. 4 out of the
7 boats were retiring one after the other. Left on the
somewhat deserted racecourse, the Musto Skiffs remaining
now were a current 49er olympic campaigner (Julian),
an ex 49er olympic campaigner (Patrick) and the lightweight
Iver Ahlmann. The battle to the finish line soon limited
itself to a "whoever capsizes less, wins",
Julian taking the bullet, Iver second and Patrick third.
At the start though, as it later turned out, Iver had
breached the india flag, nudging over the line within
the last minute before the start, serving an OCS.
Conditions for the second race were similar
to race 1. It started with only three boats, and this
time Iver took the bullet, followed by Julian and Patrick.
Getting only three boats out of nine over
the finish line, appears to be pretty bad effort for
the young class, but in context, only 3 out of 18 International
14s made it over the finish and none of the four ICs.
Also, a 29er was demasted…
Sunday dawned much more friendly with
a clear sky and bright sunshine. There were moderate
winds in the morning which, as the day went on, got
lighter and shut off altogether by about 3pm. Two races
were attempted. The first race had to be abandoned after
the time limit of 90min had been reached and no-one
had reached the finish line.
Following that, there was a rather pleasant
wait of 2h on the water. The wind had calmed down to
patches of 2 or 3 knots. Those who hadn't been out on
saturday, used this time for polishing the undersides
of their boats, while others used this time for giving
two potential class newcomers a go in the boat. Notably,
one of the potentials is an ex-cat sailor girl. While
there already are 2 girls in the German fleet (out of
45 boats), there have been numerous test sail requests
by girls recently. So at this rate, we might have a
very significant girls fleet of Musto Skiffs in Germany
before long.
As you can see, all in all, the German
Musto Skiff Class is marching in very much the right
direction.
Overall results
1 GER431 Julian Ramm
2 GER397 Patrick Boehmer
3 GER370 Iver Ahlmann
Full results
http://www.wscw.de/pdf/musto.pdf
More photos
http://www.wscw.de/index.php?ln=1&navid=50&anf=0
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