Although the doldrums still had Kieler Woche firmly in their grip on the second day, yesterday, Sunday, the mood among the sailors is still unclouded. No wonder - on the one hand, the high pressure meant extremely little wind, but on the other hand, bright sunshine over the fjord.
This meant that most of the time on the water was taken up with sunbathing and other activities. Only two of 45 planned races could be sailed on the triangular courses of Kiel Week on Sunday. An extensive area of high pressure caused a lull that prevented any further racing. Only the Folkeboot and the J24, two non-Olympic keelboat classes, completed their races.
The Danish crew led by Hans Henriksen won the Folkboat class, while the best German team was Jürgen Breitenbach's team from Hamburg. In the J24 class, the Swedish crew of Peter Rosenqvist won ahead of the team of Peer Kock from Hamburg. After the races on Saturday in the 29er and 420er, just four of the 16 international classes have started after two days of racing. Nevertheless, this is no problem for the new head of organisation Jobst Richter: "The wind will come up on Monday, we will start sailing first thing in the morning and want to complete four races in all classes." Wind is also forecast for the last day of racing for the international classes on Tuesday: "Nobody needs to worry, we will be crowning Kiel Week winners in all classes."
One of the most prominent participants in this year's Kieler Woche is among those who don't want to be at the front of the podium: Hasso Plattner, founder and co-owner of software company SAP, is competing in the 505. He has completed a training camp with Wolfgang Hunger and Holger Jeß especially for Kieler Woche - not on the cold Baltic Sea, however, but in Bermuda. For Plattner, whose maxim in life is to always achieve the best possible result, Kiel Week is not the end of the line: The World Championship in Warnemünde is also still on his regatta calendar.
On Saturday, in bright sunshine and light winds of around 2 Beaufort, around 220 yachts crossed the starting line at the Aalregatta, traditionally the first race at the World Sailing Festival, in front of several thousand spectators on the Hindenburgufer and made their way to Eckernförde.
The first boat to cross the finish line was the Open 60 "Hugo Boss" of Briton Alex Thomson - and was around an hour ahead of the next boats. But the fast racer, which had been in this year's Vendée Globe regatta but had to give up before Cape Town, had a lot to answer for and had to settle for third place in the ORC 1 class in the end - beaten by the yachts "Dawn" and "Meltemi".
