Knot leads past Visby

Håkan Lindström updates us on the progress of the SeaCart 30 trimarans in the Eurocard Gotland Rund

Going into the last leg of Round Gotland Race with one quarter of the way to go, the six SeaCarts came in well over an hour apart around the mark inside Gotland's Visby Harbour.

"We had a great 40 nm wind from the southernmost mark to Knolls Grund, 30 miles west of Visby," said Fredrik Adilstam, skipper on the leading SeaCart 30, Knot. "There were long stretches with around 20 knots of speed under the Code 0 and main."

Coming in to Visby the wind was 14-17 knots. Vinden was sailed very agressively noticably increasing their lead. Around the mark they were 22 minutes and a long distance ahead of Morticia with former Swedish Olympic Tornado helmsman Martin Strandberg on board. Later on Mr Sea Cart himself, Calle Hennix, in Audi came in carrying Code 0 in conditions normally demanding for the much bigger G0 sail. During the race the leading Knot team had broken two halyards and we guess that the Audi team had suffered from that problem as well: no halyard, no gennaker.

Team Gillas with North Sailmaker Anders Lewander at the helm were next. They seemed tired after the second night and some pretty tough sailing and were not really on the edge in the Visby rounding. Lewander warmed up the week before the Round Gotland race with a second place in the very demanding five day Archipelago Raid in his F18. Leaving Visby thier SeaCart 30 drove away at a steady 18-19 knots of speed towards the finish in Sandhamn, 100 nm to the north.

The ladies-only crew on Havet, sponsored by UBS, came in all smiles to Visby, despite having lost contact with the first boats during the night. Their boat was nicely driven and the girls seemed to be in good shape. Most likely they had suffered a bit against the stronger and more experienced male teams, but for sure Anna Drougge and her crew are closing the gap. Given a weather forecast and the winds experienced the second night, the girls would have prefered to have had a sixth person on board. In the lighter conditions during the first 36 h they were in places five to two most of the race, giving all the others strong competition.

We had no chance to see the sixth boat, 3 Business. Having chartered the boat just before the race they were out of practice and maybe also without the A0 - a winning sail in any light upwind conditions that easily gives you 10-15 knots of speed when a Mumm 36 still doing only 3 or 4 knots. Having sailed the all carbon fibre SeaCart 30 on a daily basis boat speed of two to three times windspeed in light wind conditions is still the most sensational experience.

The Sea Cart and the J/80s are the only one design class rule fleets in this years Round Gotland Race. The few left J/105s and X-99s are sailing handicap due to the lack of boats, as is the new X-35.

"The first 40 hours we were all within reach of one another, which is the ultimate race conditions," commented Pontus Johansson second helm and trimmer in the Knot team on leading Havet.

The SeaCarts are expected to reach the finnish in Sandhamn later today. They have to sail a 63 nm light wind and 10 hour longer route than VO70 Ericsson and they came into Visby 10 hours after Ericsson. They will be greeted in Sandhamn by Ericsson, three ORMA 60 trimaranss and maybe a few more 70-100 foot monohulls that sailed the 63 nm shorter course. Each one of those mentioned have a budget that exceeds the total budget for the total Sea Cart 30 fleet with six boats and 26 persons sailing. It was interesting to see the 50 foot monohulls coming in on a run to Visby doing 7-9 knots with massive number of crew, being passed by one Sea Cart 30 after the other with no dead weight and four to five people crew, all persons actively sailing the boat.