Race report ·
One win, 153 metres and silver for the season
A win over twelve hours, on miles sailed and on corrected miles, the longest distance over the full 24 – and a 500-gram silver bar for second place among 191 boats.
Photos from this post
A record fleet and an eight o’clock start
The twelve- and twenty-four-hour races on 13 July were the second stage of the 2024 Long Distance Challenge. With 206 sailors on 55 boats, the club recorded a new participation record; a year earlier there had been 187. 38 crews raced for twelve hours, 17 boats took on the full twenty-four. What counts is distance, measured in straight lines between the buoys and converted by Yardstick.
The gun went at eight sharp outside the club. Instead of the forecast rain there was more sunshine than predicted, steady warmth and a light breeze.
35.831 miles in twelve hours
On board Liberté, skipper Tobias Böckl sailed with an international crew of nine from three clubs: Alexander Lausecker, Lukas Neumüller, Florian Gföllner, Benedikt Stärker, Anna Saletu, Alexander Steinleithner and Luis Wenger-Oehn from UYCAs and SCATT, with Chas Beek and Adam Bradly of the NHYC. With that line-up, English commands could be heard on Lake Attersee too.
From the start Liberté broke away from the fleet and led throughout. After twelve hours she had covered 35.831 miles, about 56 kilometres. The lead held after the conversion as well: a win on miles sailed and on corrected miles.
153 metres
As one of 17 boats, Liberté sailed on through a cool summer night in which the wind stayed as gentle as it had been by day. With roughly 76 miles, about 140 kilometres, no other boat covered a greater distance, and that brought the win in the ranking for the longest distance.
Converted by Yardstick, however, the youth team of the Union-Yacht-Club Wolfgangsee around Lukas Eigenstuhler, on a Global One Design, came out ahead by 153 metres. Over 140 kilometres that is about eleven ten-thousandths of the course: the length of a club jetty decided it.
The Long Race on 3 August
The series closed with the 96th Long Race on 3 August, with 122 boats and 367 sailors, more than ever before. It stayed dry; the wind was mostly light and came from every direction, leaving calm patches all over the lake. First across the line was August Schram with the Quant 30 after 4:01:47; on corrected time Lukas Richter won with the 99-year-old 35 m² racing class “Rakete”. Liberté finished the race 18th on corrected time.
Silver for the season
In the Long Distance Challenge standings, with 15th at the Attersee Grand Prix, first in the twelve hours and 18th in the Long Race, Liberté collected 942.4 points. The overall win went to Thomas Stelzl, rewarded with a one-kilogram silver bar; Liberté finished second among 191 boats and received 500 grams of silver. Only one year on our results list stands above it: 2021, when the same boat won the series, racing then as Teekanne.
The figures in this report come from two reports published by the UYCAs and from the series final standings.
