Thursday ended the second offshore stage of the regatta Nord Stream Race – Copenhagen – Stockholm. It was the longest transition that lasted more than 40 hours.
© Andrey Sheremetev
This is the equator of the regatta, ahead of the two offshore stages Stockholm – Helsinki and Helsinki – St. Petersburg, and two series of short coastal races in Stockholm and in Helsinki.
In the second offshore stage, the gold was won by the Royal Swedish yacht club, in second place racing North German Union, the third – the “Leviathan.” In the General offset the Russian team at the 2nd place with a score of 9 points. The leader of the Royal Swedish yacht club with the same number of points, in third place the Royal Danish yacht club with a score of 13 points.
For the second stage of the race the yachtsmen were 390 nautical miles, the weather conditions in the Baltic sea has changed several times: from total calm to a fresh head wind, which reached 24 knots in the gusts. Many athletes noted that this was the real test: roll the yacht was about 30 degrees, a three-meter wave constantly hits the boat, and in this time all need to be on deck.
On the second stage of the offshore part of the Swedish team was the youngest in the passage involved 2 girls. “It was hard, especially towards the end of the race. It was a very long transition. We have covered practically all weather conditions that you can imagine. Then the wind at all sour. We lost speed, and we just had to turn the big waves, as well as all the boats around. Despite the fact that Russia started the best, we can continue to get around them,” – said trimmer of the Swedish team Markus Helander. He admitted that the real challenge for the whole team began a three-meter wave. All, without exception, were soaked.
“You know, it was a very hard stage, said the skipper of the German team, Sven-Eric Hord. – Everything is constantly changing: we were the first, then last, and we are very pleased to finished second. We are very proud of the Swedish team, the guys were super-fast”.
The Russian team repeated the scenario of the previous race, taking a good start and losing the lead towards the end. “We are unhappy with the result, we again were in the lead, days were the lead – and lost again in not very clear to me the situation,” commented team tactics “Leviathan” Michael Sheremet.
29 June in Stockholm will be the coastal race. The Nord Stream Race fleet will start together with starchase Swedish AF Offshore Race regatta.
Results and race tracking is available here: http://nord-stream-race.com/live.
Alex Fat
PR-Director of the Yacht club of Saint-Petersburg
