Ærø Round: More than 100 crews in Baltic Sea bliss: "Fantastic night sailing" at the Baltic Sea Rally Ærø Round

For the 27th time, the Gode Wind Yacht Club, the Schilkseer Yacht Club, the Baltic Sailing Club and the Kiel Sailing Association sent the participants of the Ærø Rund into their popular Baltic Sea rally at the weekend. The response was huge: more than 100 boats turned up at the starting line and enjoyed the regatta in two parts. In very flat conditions, the sailors had to labour at the slow-motion start off Kiel at the beginning, but were rewarded with "magical light" overnight with slightly better winds and an almost full moon. "The northern sky never really got dark," enthused Jürgen Könemann, who started with his wife Gundula Miksch, Chairwoman of the Schilkseer Yacht Club, on the X 4.0 "BellafiX" together with eleven other boats in the double-handed classification.

Whether yardstickers, double-handers or ambitious sports sailors, whether fast Fast 40, Swan, Sagitta, X-Yacht or Beneteau - the range of participating boats was impressive. With a field roughly the size of the North Sea Week, the Ærø Round showed just how much enthusiasm there can be for a fun regatta in the Baltic Sea. Lars Hückstedt, who was one of the top teams at the Ærø Rund with Walter Watermann's crew on the Farr 40-plus racer "X-Day", reports: "The regatta was extremely warm and beautifully organised. We had a lot of fun both on the water and ashore. Our owner Walter Watermann is a member of the Gode Wind Yacht Club and was keen to take part. We haven't had our boat for very long. Accordingly, we had initially planned training sessions for the start of the season. The North Sea Week was not yet an option because we couldn't be sure how quickly we would get to grips with the new boat. We wouldn't have dared to do the Pantaenius round Skagen with the new boat when we originally planned it. In the meantime, however, we have come a long way. The first light wind regattas of the season and the beautiful Ærø Rund offered good opportunities for this." Like many ambitious German regatta projects, the X-Day team now has Kiel Week, the German Championship off Warnemünde and the ORC European Championship in the Norwegian waters of Hankø on the programme for the coming weeks and months.

Until then, the Ærø Round remains a happy summer memory, which favoured boats with spinnakers or gennakers in the light winds on the outward leg and shone and also challenged with wonderful regatta conditions on course Kiel on the way back. In between, the crews had fun together in Denmark after the sensible course shortening and the onward journey to the stage harbour of Marstal. With wind force four at the start, the finale brought up to 25 or 26 knots of pressure in the final phase to Strande. "It was a real regatta atmosphere," says Könemann, "it was really nice to see 100 boats turn up."

Even before their own start, some of the Ærø Rund crews had merged with the returning participants of the long-distance classic Pantaenius Rund Skagen. The Skagen returnees reported on their experiences before the Ærø Rund starters set off on their course. "It was a great jetty life," says Könemann, describing the atmosphere in Kiel-Schilksee last Friday. "There were top stars like the 'Hinden' or the 'Frida' or even our club mate Kai Greten with the 'Oromocto' in the harbour. They told us how their spinnaker pole crumbled away in a squall of almost ten Beaufort. That was pretty exciting to hear." It's nice when participants in very different German regattas meet in this way. Click here for the results (please click!).