North Sea Week: The "Bank" wins the Edinburgh Race

The sailing club Das Wappen von Bremen e.V. (SKWB) wins the offshore regatta from Helgoland to Edinburgh with its club yacht "Bank von Bremen", a Judel/Vrolijk 53, skippered by Bodo Mall. 81st North Sea Week was held.

The "Bank" had initially steered a westerly course to sail around some wind farms before heading north on Tuesday afternoon. This enabled the crew to skilfully reduce the predicted calm to a short period of time, and in the course of Wednesday they then set a westerly course again with the shifting wind. Strong winds set in for the night from Wednesday to Thursday, and the last stretch in the Firth of Forth was against the wind. On Thursday morning, the yacht crossed the finish line at the host Royal Forth Yacht Club (RFYC) at 7:19 (local time) after two days, 15 hours and 39 minutes.

The "Shakti" was the quickest to reach the finish line However, the yacht slipped to second place in the overall standings due to its handicap.

"Bank" skipper Mall was extremely pleased with the result: "I'm very happy about the victory. It is something special for our club, because the crew included several young people who were sailing their first ocean race."

SWKB's "Wappen von Bremen III", which had also set off on the regatta course, was less fortunate. The crew had to decide to abandon the regatta and return to Helgoland due to the prolonged lull and time constraints.

The DK46 "Guts n Glory" was also unlucky, having to sail back to Newcastle due to broken sails, as was the Batchford "One step ahead", which had to abandon the race due to water ingress. The "Dessert d' Alcyone" had to abandon the race due to a broken centre shroud and the "Chosi 6" due to severe seasickness of a crew member. The "Baxkiste" lost power, so the crew also had to call at Newcastle on the English coast. And the "Tamam" had no main halyard and therefore no mainsail from the Dogger Bank onwards and only made slow progress.

In the end, 22 of the 33 ships that started made it to Edinburgh. All results can be found here.