Brit team put the pressure on

After day two of the Swedish Archipelago Raid

Fredrik Adilstam (third last year) and Pontus Johansson on Addicom 1 are leading the Archipelago Raid after one and a half day and one night of sailing, orienteering and paddling in the archipelago of Stockholm. The first leg (a total of five legs during the race) lasted around 15-18 hours and in total darkness the Swedes on Addicom 1 were first to reach the leg finish at 11.30 pm in Nynashamn in the southern part of the archipelago. The latecomers finished at around 02.00 in the morning.

After a short break for the tired sailors the restart of leg 2 was set at 04.00 this morning. In the beautiful daybreak the competitors had the wind in their backs giving a spectacular spinnaker start. ”It was a fantastic sight. All alone out on the quiet ocean the 27 small catamarans were dancing along in the sun rise with their colourful spinnaker sails!” race organiser Christine Guillou-Salén reported.

In the stable high pressure there are no strong winds kicking in but today the competitors have not yet needed to paddle. It was a different story last night when a couple hours’ of paddling in the pitch black August night was not the most popular part of the race. ”We are sailors and not paddlers!” joked the British team William Sunnucks and Marc Self on X-Leisure, after being out-paddled by the Swedes on Addicom during
the night and therefore reached Nynashamn and the finish of leg 1 on a respected second place.

The British team are UK-champions in long distance catamaran sailing but has never been to these waters before. Today at 1 pm the English duo was first at the check point in Sandhamn. The French team Eric Proust and Yann Andrillon on Proust Sailing were two minutes behind and the first local team Addicom 1 where third at the checkpoint. ”We are extremely impressed by the foreign teams doing so well. They have incredible boat speed at the same time as they need to put much more time into navigation than the local teams. Very good to be first in Sandhamn,” the local sailor Pontus Johansson on Addicom 1 commented. Points wise, Addicom 1 is still leading the race after about 36 hours of racing.

William Sunnucks on X-Leisure agreed with Johansson. “We put a lot of effort into navigation and it is a really tough part of the race for us,” he said, while looking at the charts and planning their route to the next checkpoint.

On this second leg the boats are heading to the island Fejan in the northern part of the Stockholm Archipelago and are expected to finish the leg earliest at 9 pm tonight.

Leg 3 will take the competitors over an open stretch of the Baltic Sea to the archipelago of Åland, close to Finland.

ETA in Gustavsberg/Stockholm Friday afternoon, August 13.

POSITION OF 10 FIRST BOATS AFTER LEG 1, including 6 checkpoints, plus
three checkpoints of Leg 2 There are five legs with around 6 checkpoints
at each leg. The result is based on a point system determined by the
arrival position of each leg, plus 0,5 points for the first boat at each
checkpoint.

1 Addicom 1 (SWE) 33p
2 Team X-Leisure (GB) 32p
3 Sogeti (SWE) 29.5p
4 Jobman Workwear (SWE) 28p
5 Frugo (POL) 27p
6 PAF (SWE) 26p
7 Tidermans (SWE) 25p
8 GB Glace (SWE) 24p
9 Ocean Works (SWE) 23p
10 Proust Sailing (FRA) 22p

More photos on page 2...