After last year’s hiatus, it was a great pleasure to welcome five nations (Austria, France, Germany, Gibraltar and the Netherlands) with 19 sailors to the 11th Saar-Lor-Lux Regatta hosted by the Yacht-Club Saarbrücken – a very respectable turnout, especially given that THREE other A4E regattas were taking place simultaneously in England, Sweden and Austria.
This regatta also coincided with a record-breaking high-pressure system over Europe, bringing temperatures up to 30 degrees… (in the shade!) and the wind conditions to match.
The day before, boats were prepared and a few hopefuls ventured out onto the mirror-flat water in a vain attempt to gauge the wind direction, before paddling back to the harbour.
All the nicer, then, was the first evening, when participants and partners gathered for a convivial dinner at the excellent club restaurant and, dressed in T-shirts and shorts, enjoyed Saarland-African cuisine well into the night – not to mention the freshly tapped local beer. The notorious Jägermeister cooling machine was, mercifully, still in preparation!
The first official day of racing began with a generous breakfast lovingly prepared with much help and care… followed by a pre-regatta lunch… a we’re-waiting-for-wind coffee break… a hope-dies-last afternoon cake… and finally, in the late afternoon, the first oh-well-never-mind beer! The wind gods refused to break through the heat, and the following days didn’t look any more promising.
So the Jägermeister cooling machine arrived with the fury of a wrathful Zeus – right on cue! That evening, we gathered for the welcome reception at the rustic Bosen sailing club, with Rhineland-Palatinate champagne, beer, wine and good cheer, followed by an assembly-line dispensing of Jägermeisters to all who took part in the Team Photo Challenge. Winners and losers alike had to take their punishment – only one driver with three children was graciously excused!
On Saturday morning, Lake Bostal was giving the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles a run for its money, and among the 19 participants there were roughly 19 different theories on how the wind would develop. The only one who calmly headed out to sea on the committee boat was our intrepid race officer Achim Müller. Having sold his soul to the wind gods once and for all, the wind did indeed arrive – and brought us not one, not two, but five races! All in 20 minutes! Well, that’s how it felt, anyway, because Achim was starting one race after another as though he hadn’t sold his soul to the wind gods at all, but to the wind devil himself! Despite the Lake Bostal-typical wind shifts of 30 to 60 degrees, there were always exciting and fair upwind legs – and less fair downwind legs, where six or seven places could be lost (or gained!) in an instant, as the boat just 3 metres to your right shot past as if on rails – certainly faster than Deutsche Bahn!
After a successful day on the water, the hard work was rewarded with another evening at the Bosen clubhouse – “same procedure as every year!” There was even more celebrating this time, because tonight we had truly earned our food and drink! The teams tried their hand at a very entertaining memory game that conjured up many fond memories of past regattas and situations. A heartfelt thank you here once again to Manuela and Gaby for the idea, organisation and hosting – and all in three languages!
On Sunday morning the water was once again as smooth as an Olympic ice-stock competition! But the ever-optimistic Achim was already out on the water by 11, laying the marks and effectively forcing us out there too… and the wind came… wanted to come… and then was gone. But thanks to a shortened course, a final, sixth race was completed, fraying nerves and producing some interesting results – especially for the four boats that happened upon the 3-metre-wide strip of wind on the top-left of the course (the four of them naturally claimed to have seen it coming…).
This shuffled the results at the top once more, and Hendrik Oberheid took the win – a fantastic achievement, given that he only joined the 2.4m class around two years ago. Second and third place went to our light-air specialists from the Seine: Loïc Eonnet and Christophe Etorre! A great performance and hats off in such tricky wind conditions!
At the prize-giving there were, as at all A4E events, wonderful prizes thanks to our generous sponsors – Clown Sails, DEG and VELUX.
Once again, it was a great success, and another huge thank you to Michael Jakobs, who “delivered” yet again! Brilliant!
Janos Libor, GBR 1001, winner of the Report Trophy
