The participants of the Silverrudder 2022 started this morning in a good 20 knots of wind with strong gusts and showers. While many of them battled for a long time to conquer the bridge in the doldrums and counter-current in the Great Belt at sunset (to be seen in the tracker) For some, the race is over before it has really begun.
In the tightly packed starting field, it sometimes takes just one overly spirited turn to put many others in trouble. "Once you're in a crowd like that, there's no chance of avoiding it," says Rolf Beckmann who started today with his Archambault in the "Medium" group. To run up after a good 500 metres.
"There was a real buzz in the very full field of participants," says Rolf Beckmann. It was to be the seventh Silverrudder for the experienced skipper and sailing instructor. It was not the first time he had to deal with wind conditions like today, and he was happy to start from the second row. "We had an extremely strong incoming current today. Experience shows that there is no current on the inside. I've raced there before and it's always worked out. But there's not much room left before it gets shallow," is his experience from the last few years. Today, however, it was too tight for him. "When everyone started pushing up, I made sure I didn't hit anyone in the boat rather than looking at the depth sounder," he explains.
Shortly afterwards, he runs aground. Not for the first time. "Running aground at six or seven knots is normally no problem, I always get out again. But today I had ten knots on the log, which was far too fast." Wind from one side, current from the other: it was impossible to sail and the drift towards the shore continued. A motorboat tried to tow him out, but he couldn't get free without using his own engine. That was the end of the seventh Silverrudder for him. At least he was able to give towing assistance to another skipper on the way into the harbour, who had run his own mooring line into the propeller.
Wuhling at the start also meant a premature end for Stefan Knabe and his J 39. "We were driving in a large group and one of Lee's drivers simply didn't join the group but luffed up. He said I was overtaking and had to get out of the way. But I couldn't do that because I had six or seven boats upwind," he reports of a dilemma with consequences. In the end, it got so tight that he had to tack. An up-comer can't get far enough out of the way and takes the stern of the J 39 with his main boom, which turns slightly and hits the boat of a Swede with the gennaker pole in the stern. The Swede in turn also turns and crashes into the next boat to windward with the gennaker pole. The Swede's gennaker pole also breaks, and not only that: it has a hole in the boat and is now in the shipyard. Stefan Knabe has sailed his J 39 many times before, and his experiences have mostly been good. "Today was such a chain: one of them comes up from windward and pushes them all together."
The Hamburg Peter Wrede had bad luck of a different kind: the evening before, a neighbour helped him set the genoa. Without checking it, he furled it. Today, when he rolled it out, he was in for a nasty surprise: the genoa was not fully inserted into the keder and was now coming loose from the guide metre by metre. He still sets the code zero, but shoots into the sun in a gust; the code zero breaks and Peter Wrede turns back. "Maybe that was too quick a decision; I could have just kept sailing until the wind dropped. That would have worked. You're always smarter afterwards," he summarises.
