Challenge of Netsurvey Finishes First

Bright sunshine for the first time in several days greeted the fleet racing in the Volvo Baltic Race as they crossed the finish line in Sandhamn yesterday, after a gruelling race from Kiel, Germany.

Hoarse from shouting to each other above the strong winds, Matthew HUMPHRIES and Erle WILLIAMS could hardly speak when they reached the dock. After a constant fight, HUMPHRIES team, racing Challenge of Netsurvey, beat TeamRS by 27 minutes 50 seconds, to take first place. TeamRS broke a runner in the final stages and finished under headsail only.

Speaking immediately after crossing the finish line, HUMPHRIES said,“We’ve had thunderstorms and massive squalls. We were becalmed for just a few minutes last night, so we’ve had a bit of everything. Generally it was very windy and very hard to hear each other. There was a lot of screaming to get sails down when the big squalls were coming. It was a very, very exciting race and we’re really pleased with the result.”

Erle WILLIAMS and TeamRS had a few hairy moments, “”At one point Challenge dropped their chute and we carried on, trying to get round the corner of Denmark, when all the wind was on it. If we had just got round the corner, it would have been awesome and we would have made a big gain, but it was too dangerous to attempt it. We were very close to the lay-line but we were on a lee shore with 40 knots of wind and we were almost out of control and probably wouldn’t have made it, so we made the decision to get rid of it [drop the spinnaker]. It was pretty exciting,” said a relieved WILLIAMS.

Just over an hour later Sony Ericsson finished third, the last of the three latest generation VO60s. “The worst and the best was the wind,” said skipper Thomas BLIXT.

Elanders Ten Celsius, with Volvo veterans Michael LUNDH and Wouter VERBRAAK in charge, finished approximately 30 minutes later. LUNDH explains; “We did what we set out to do and that was to play safe and not break anything. We pushed hard but we didn’t do any gybes the first night because we didn’t feel that the whole crew was really up to it. So we did a few ‘cow’ turns and played the penalty in lost distance but we think we took it back when we actually sailed a little bit and we are happy being close to Sony Ericsson.”

Nilorn, finishing eight and a half hours later, led the two youth teams who have been on a steep learning curve. Skipper Fredrik FREJME said, cheerfully; “It was very windy in the beginning and I was very glad to have Glenn (BOURKE) and Andy (HINDLEY) onboard, especially with this crew who had never been out before in these conditions. It is because of them we are here right now.”

BOURKE’S answer to that was, “We did just about every manoeuvre you could do in a race and we had just about every condition that you could ever want. We had 40 knots behind us on a screaming run and they handled that really well. We had 28 knots going to windward, slamming through waves with the boat fully loaded, which felt pretty dangerous, and we had beautiful running and beating conditions either side of that. They did things like peel the spinnaker which none of them had ever done before; they went up the mast and uncrossed all the halyards they’d crossed in the night when they didn’t realise how to lay halyards out so that that doesn’t happen.”

Pontona Youth finished approximately 30 minutes later. Skipper, Thomas DAHL says the crew is raring to go. “My arms are completely numb from steering in the waves from Kiel to the southern part of Sweden where the conditions were really rough. Some of the guys got hit by ropes or winch handles, but nothing serious. I think we all have a few blue marks here and there, but we’re still keen to sail. Now we’re ready to take anything.”

The only boat yet to finish is Atea, who is thought to be under power.

Gear damage was evenly spread throughout the fleet. Challenge of Netsurvey blew out her reaching headsail at Kiel Lighthouse, but the crew will try and repair it as they do not have a replacement. Sony Ericsson also destroyed a headsail but with no chance of repair and TeamRS broke a runner on the final approaches to the finish line.

Nilorn broke her spinnaker pole and shredded her spinnaker, and Pontona Youth lost several battens, blew out their jib no 2 – a very new one and a very nice one unfortunately – and destroyed a spinnaker which completely exploded.

Elanders Ten Celsius got away unscathed. “The most important thing for us is that we see it as a long term race and we didn’t want to break anything and we wanted to save the boat. And when we look at the other boats and see what they have broken, I think we have done really, really well,” said co-skipper, Wouter VERBRAAK.