Glücksburg and its sailors are preparing for the league onslaught and a long sailing weekend of superlatives: This weekend, 60 (!) club crews will be fighting for six places in the 2nd Bundesliga with support from their fan communities. The league event attracts clubs from all over the country to the north of Germany. As last year, it will be hosted by the Hanseatic Yacht School Glücksburg, organised by the Verein Segel-Liga, and run by the Flensburger Segel-Club in cooperation with the Deutscher Hochseesportverband Hansa. The organiser is the German Sailing Association. The races are sailed on J70 yachts on the Flensburg Fjord. The race organisers are Claus Otto Hansen and Hajo Andresen. Uli Finckh will be the referee chairman.
Here are some of the best impressions from the 2014 second league qualifier, which was also held on the Flensburg Fjord and provides some good ideas for the upcoming weekend.
Among the 60 hopeful teams are six clubs that were already in the second division this year, but will have to enter the relegation play-off at the end of the season due to their 13th to 18th place, which offers all other clubs a great opportunity to get into the league. The Segel-Club Münster, the Yacht-Club Langenargen, the Segel-Club Ville, the Seglervereinigung 1903 Berlin, the Duisburger Segel-Club and the Yachtclub Strelasund, which is at the bottom of the second division table, will have to fear and fight for their second division membership.
The 54 newcomers come from the federal states of Hamburg, Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, Berlin, Bavaria, Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Württemberg, Brandenburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Thuringia. Among them is Germany's oldest sailing club, SC Rhe from Hamburg. The most league-hungry teams are travelling from North Rhine-Westphalia with 13 club teams. Schleswig-Holstein has seven teams. Five clubs each come from Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Berlin. Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg have four crews each. Three teams come from Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and two each from Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate. Thuringia is represented by one club.
The crews arrive on Wednesday and are allowed to train on the league boats for two days from Thursday before the first starting shot is fired on Saturday morning.
Tatjana Pokorny
Sports reporter
