“Pure sailing, no frills” – that’s how participant Michael Thomsen succinctly described the special character of the amateur regatta after it had finished: “In this race, you’re competing against yourself. You get to know yourself and your boat in a completely different way.” At the finish line in Svendborg yesterday evening (20 September 2026), the finishers’ T-shirts were handed out. Around 275 of the 332 starters reached the finish line. The Silver Rudders 2026 It’s over. And, as organiser Philip Cossen put it, it was “a crazy, exciting race”. Not just because of the records.
It was also a race that seriously tested its safety protocols. One sailor was towed behind his boat, which had sailed on ahead, for a good hour during the night. One competitor suffered a heart attack shortly after the start. A trimaran capsized, and following a collision, a Comfortina 32 belonging to a German competitor lost its mast. The good news is that nobody was seriously injured. The in-depth interview “Mayday at midnight at the Silverrudder” describes how narrow a escape the rescue of a skipper who had fallen overboard was.
The weather: tougher than expected
Weather forecaster Juri Jehrmann had provided a detailed briefing. Nevertheless, the race proved tougher than expected for many sailors. Not only in the north of Funen, where the worst conditions had been feared, but in the south of all places: as they exited the Little Belt, many boats were met with a broad reach scenario featuring gusty west-south-westerly winds and short, steep waves. Most boats sailed the last six to eight hours under a jib and a double-reefed mainsail. Heavy, unforeseen rain showers also brought gusts of up to 32 knots.
The winners and their records
Wolfram Heibeck put in an outstanding performance in the monohull class. At the helm of his ‘Black Maggy’, the Hooksiel-based sailor crossed the finish line after 17 hours, ten minutes and 34 seconds. He beat his own record from 2021 by 26 minutes and 16 seconds, and was thus even faster than the winner of the next higher class. For the Conversion Open 40 It was a record set under conditions that hardly felt like a record-breaking run. Heibeck sums up the race simply: “Heavy, mega heavy. It didn’t feel like a fastest lap. It was proper hard work.”
Only Jan Andersen was faster. The Danish designer and boatbuilder sailed his self-built Marlin 33, the “Black Marlin”, across the finish line in 14 hours, seven minutes and 21 seconds, becoming the first boat ever to do so. In doing so, he beat his own record from 2021 by one minute and 32 seconds. Andersen has only recently, with the ‘Black Marlin’ has sailed to New Zealand. His lightweight carbon fibre trimaran, which *YACHT* has already has portrayed in detail, remained the benchmark in this edition of Silverruder too.
In the Keelboats Medium class, Jonas Hallberg made a big impression. The German won in his JPK 10.50 “Hinden” in 17 hours, 47 minutes and 11 seconds, beating the record set in 2021 by Jan Hansen on the Figaro 2 “The Beast” by 44 minutes and 36 seconds. Just five minutes and 39 seconds later, Kim Haugaard followed in his self-built Kimoca “Khaos”. The home-built yacht had been the talk of the Danish sailing scene ahead of the start and now delivered on its promise of speed. *Die YACHT* will soon be featuring the Kimoca “Khaos” in a detailed profile.
Tom Wehde won the Mini class in his Vector 650 “Osterrath” in 21 hours, 16 minutes and 51 seconds, a full hour ahead of Mattis Franken in another Vector 650. For Wehde, it was his first appearance in the Silverruder race. He arrived on Funen with a wealth of offshore experience: at the Mini Atlantique 2026 He had completed both the outward and return legs and finished 17th in the production boat classification.
Patrick Heinrichs secured the class victory in the Keelboats Small category with his Esse 850 ‘Jynx’, clocking a time of 19 hours, 33 minutes and 21 seconds. This means that the record set in this class by Oliver Schmidt-Rybandt in 2021 remains unbroken: at the time, he sailed round Funen in just over an hour less on his Dehler 30 OD. A good twenty minutes after Heinrichs, five-time German champion in the Europe class and offshore double-handed sailor Sverre Reinke crossed the finish line in second place aboard his Sun Fast 30 OD “Gaia”.
Martin Meredin won the Extra-Large class in 17 hours, 23 minutes and 44 seconds aboard his Landmark 43 ‘Esbern Snare’. Rüdiger Schwarz was a full 15 minutes faster, bringing his Dragonfly 25 Sport ‘Gecko’ across the finish line first out of two finishers in the Multihull Small group, despite the most adverse conditions imaginable.
The battle for the First 27 SE European Championship title ended with the defending champion retaining his crown: Uroš Kraševac successfully defended the title he had won the previous year. He was the only one who still had the energy to hoist the spinnaker in the final windy miles before Svendborg. After 20 gruelling hours, all the others were simply too exhausted.
A night no one will ever forget: Man overboard
The Silverruder 2026 resulted in several call-outs for the Danish Sea Rescue Service. The most dramatic: a sailor fell overboard from his Beneteau First 18 SE at night near the northern tip of Funen. Matija – who does not wish his full name to be published – was tethered, but the boat carried on. At over four knots. For more than an hour, he was dragged behind his own boat. His salvation came in the form of a handheld radio, which he was carrying on his person for the first time in nine years and which he eventually used to send out a Mayday call. In an interview with YACHT, he describes the dramatic events and his rescue.
The German sailor Max Käkenmeister experienced the situation at first hand. He was taking part in the Silverruder for the eighth time. The volunteer firefighter was sailing north of Æbelø when a call came in on Channel 16 that was initially hard to make sense of. “It was this totally distorted, crackly ‘I’m in the water, I’m in the water’,” he recalls. “You think: Is this a joke? Is this for real?” The one thing that was clear was that someone was in the water. Käkenmeister concluded that a handheld radio must be in the water not far from the person.
The boat was eventually located on the tracker using its race number and name. Käkenmeister relayed the position – about one and a half miles west of Æbelø – to Lyngby Radio. The Danish sea rescue service had difficulty understanding the radio messages from the man who had fallen overboard. Whilst the rescue operation was getting under way, he continued to search the area himself under difficult conditions. It was almost impossible for him to slow down; his boat had to maintain its speed in the substantial waves. There was a lot of traffic on the radio, with messages overlapping. For him, at that moment, this was no longer a normal regatta, but a rescue scenario in which every decision had to be made under time pressure.
There was a moment of panic when someone reported an inflated lifejacket with no one inside it. “I was standing in the cockpit and thought: ‘This simply cannot be happening right now.’” Shortly afterwards, however, the helicopter crew spotted Matija, who was hanging from his own lifeline behind the boat. The rescue boat was guided to the location, the sailor was pulled from the water and treated for hypothermia. By five o’clock in the morning, he was already able to leave hospital.
Käkenmeister emphasises that the rescue was not the work of a single person. Several participants had asked the right questions over the radio; the ‘Lyngby Radio’ rescue control centre and the Silverruder safety team cross-checked positions and passed them on. As far as he recalls, the helicopter arrived on the scene very quickly.
Matija later learnt an important technical detail during his conversation with the helicopter pilot: for him, radio direction-finding was a key means of navigation. However, he could only locate the glider in the water if the pilot was actively using the handheld radio.
The incident involving Matija has sparked a debate that will keep the organisers of the Silverruder busy over the coming months. Philip Cossen announced: “We will carry out a thorough review of the race and seriously consider how we can improve safety, including the option of making a PLB compulsory equipment.”
However, Cossen also points out regulatory hurdles: in Denmark, a PLB must be registered, which requires a VHF radio certificate and a radio station licence. “We need to think through the consequences first.” The Silverruder is deliberately designed to be a regatta in which, in principle, anyone can take part – it is affordable and has no complicated ORC rules. Additional bureaucratic hurdles regarding mandatory equipment could jeopardise precisely that. Striking a balance between greater safety and low-threshold access is a decision the Silverruder intends to make carefully over the coming months. According to Cossen, the safety chain functioned smoothly at this year’s regatta as well.
The Silverrudder is not a commercial regatta. Behind every edition are more than 120 volunteers who work for weeks on end – and round the clock during the race weekend. They coordinate the starts, operate the safety boats, hand out finisher’s T-shirts, help with the finish, and stand on the jetty, sometimes all night long.
Three further incidents
Just half an hour or so after the start, a Danish participant experienced severe chest pain and immediately called the safety committee for help. The volunteer safety assistants and a SAR boat set off straight away to assist the Danish man. On the way back to the harbour, Oksberg suffered a heart attack. He was resuscitated, treated with a defibrillator in the ambulance and underwent emergency surgery. He is now on the road to recovery.
Shortly after setting off, André Bätz’s Farrier F82R trimaran ‘Flaneur’ capsized about one nautical mile off Lundeborg. The leeward float broke when it struck a wave. The boat lost its stability and tipped over the bow. Bätz managed to get to the bottom of the hull and hold on to the centreboard until the sea rescue service arrived. Another participant stayed with him until he was rescued. His comment: “I hope to be back at the Silverruder soon, but probably on a different boat.” The the ‘Flaneur’, converted into a racing trimaran had already been featured in a profile back in 2023. Another multihull was forced to withdraw after a fin broke.
Perhaps the most bitter end befell a German competitor sailing a Comfortina 32. Following a collision with a Sun Fast 3300, the mast snapped. The sails and mast sank to the seabed. Cossen: “He’s in good spirits, but is understandably worried about his boat.”
Ursula Meer
Redakteurin Panorama und Reise