Race report ·
Night watch, wind poker and a new record: our double strike at the Long Distance Challenge
A broken distance record and two top-five places among 181 boats – between night-time calms and 25 knots in the evening, aboard Liberté and Mr. Cello Due.
Photos from this post
© C. SchmidleitnerFrom the cannon into the calm – and on to a record
The twelve- and twenty-four-hour races on 18 July brought 170 sailors on 48 boats to the start. At eight in the morning the old cannon fired the start signal outside the Union-Yacht-Club Attersee, and the wind started with the boats. It did not last: shortly after the start it was gone, and from then on conditions switched within seconds between 15 knots and dead calm, with the wind direction shifting constantly.
Florian Gföllner and Liberté got 65.62 nautical miles out of those twelve hours, about 122 kilometres – a new distance record for the twelve-hour race. On corrected miles that was third place, behind Dietmar Gfreiner and Hans Spitzauer on a Lago 26 SE and Matthias Poell and his crew on a 22 m² racing dinghy.
98 miles of night shift on Mr. Cello Due
Mr. Cello Due, with Tobias Böckl, sailed the full twenty-four hours. The second half began in the evening with a surprising 25 knots – on board, that meant getting the gennaker down. In the night the wind then dropped too far; at times the lake’s current was stronger than the breeze and pushed the boats back.
Even so, Mr. Cello Due covered 98.1 nautical miles, the longest distance of any boat in the 24-hour race. On corrected miles that gave fifth place; the win went to Markus Staudinger, Michael Staudinger and Markus Gebetsberger on an International 806. The twelve and twenty-four hours are one race; in the twelve-hour ranking, which counts towards the season standings, Mr. Cello Due was 13th.
© C. JonssonThird and fifth – and next up, Punat
The series closed on 8 August with the 98th Long Race: 139 boats and around 450 sailors, more than ever before. Instead of the usual calm, a breeze from the Weißenbach valley was waiting at the Burgau mark, the run back via Kammer came with the Rosenwind, and for the first time in a long while every boat finished inside the 17:00 time limit. In that race Liberté placed 18th and Mr. Cello Due 23rd.
In the season standings, won by Thomas Tschepen with the Libera A “Clandesteam”, both team boats finished among the first five of 181: Liberté with Florian Gföllner third on 866.5 points, Mr. Cello Due with Tobias Böckl fifth on 853.2. Never before have two team boats stood this high on our results list. A big thank-you goes to our partners, sponsors and the shore crew, who have our backs day and night.
Next up is salt water: from 3 October we take on the Österreichische Hochsee-Staatsmeisterschaft, the Austrian offshore championship, in Punat, Croatia. We are ready.
The figures in this report come from the reports by the OÖSV and Yachtrevue and from the series final standings.
