MidsummerSail: "Wet One" by Jan Wiechmann first at the North Buoy

It was quite a game of doldrums at the 8th edition of the longest race on the Baltic Sea, which goes from the southernmost point near Wismar to the last buoy in the far north. In the field of almost 100 yachts, the crew of the "Wet One" took the lead relatively early after the start, off the German coast, and never relinquished it. "The boat only came from the shipyard one day before the refit, we didn't train with the new boat and sails for a single day!" said co-skipper Fiete Quaschner shortly after crossing the finish line in Töre. It was immediately time for the transfer from Stralsund to Wismar and then the start. The one-off is a British 2001 built in the heyday of the IMS era, "built to beat the Farr 40, which was strong in many regattas at the time," says the co-skipper. Owner and sailmaker Jan Wiechmann bought the similarly sized boat only a short time before, after it had come from the Caribbean in a pretty run-down state.

The race then turned out to be a tough game of doldrums. After a good wind at the start off Wismar, the field quickly sailed into the high pressure and had to fight their way through shifting winds and repeated lulls for a total of 7 days, 2 hours and 3 minutes. "We had an enormous number of extreme turns and wind holes, I think we had exactly 0.0 knots boat speed on the log three times! The field kept coming up behind us." On top of that, it was mainly an upwind race. The winners are also miles away from the previous course record set by the Class 40 "Red" in 2022, which took just 4 days and 19 hours.

The decisive move for victory was the risky decision to sail through the inner archipelago off Stockholm, where the Stralsund team was able to save plenty of miles and still find enough wind to keep the pursuers at bay. Now the eight-strong winning crew are celebrating at the buoy in Töre and waiting for the first chasers, much to the delight of the crew, Jonas Musil's Farr 42, which still had around 18 miles to go this afternoon at 3pm. Currently in third place is Andreas Lindlahr's Pogo 36 "Kea", which was in second place for a long time and only had to let the Farr 42 pass at the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia. The first multihull, André Bätz's Farrier F82R "Flaneur", followed nine miles behind.

Click here for the event page and tracker.

Meanwhile, more than 200 miles back, the peloton is still fighting its way through the light headwinds and will take quite a while to reach the finish.