Third time win

Knut Frostad reports on how Team Nokia Academy won the Eurocard Round Gotland Race

The Eurocard Gotland Rund was a tighter offshore race than ever. We won the start on Sunday and led all the way round the first mark, Svenska Bjoern. Going back south towards Gotland we experienced a speed and pointing problem against HiQ. It was extremely frustrating to see them passing us on pure upwind performance. We caught them up again at the east side of Gotland, but again they left us, and as we where tangled in a tacking duel with HiQ, TietoEnator Audi passed both of us.

Rounding the south tip of Gotland on Monday evening, we where in third, but going back to Sandhamn, we had 200 nautical miles with great downwind sailing in wind speed peaking around 20 knots. We had great speed again, averaging 30 knots to Visby, and in the end HiQ gybed away from us, giving us a rare opportunity to pass them, as we where offshore in stronger breeze and gybing into a better shift.

Just before the finish we met again, and we where neck and neck. We managed to sail pass them to weather, and only finished 1 minute and 4 seconds ahead of them after 430 miles of close racing.

Team HiQ handed in two protests against us after the race (one on crew numbers and one on the situation when we passed them just before the finish), but both where dismissed as the jury found that we had done everything right.

This result was a great way to finish the first part of this year’s Nokia Oops Cup. In fact it was the third time in a row we have won the Round Gotland Race, which is the most prestigious offshore race in Scandinavia. We are keeping the boat here in Stockholm for the three weeks summer break, which we are really looking forward to. We have hardly had an hour break since the cup started.  Early August, the cup will re-start in Helsinki, Finland. Until then, we wish you all a great summer!

We had the photographer, Hans Bergren onboard as a media person. Here are some memories from a great race varying from absolutely calm to great high speed sailing:





Results, Round Gotland Offshore Race:
1. Team Nokia Academy (37hrs 39min 57sec)
2. Team HiQ (37hrs 41min 01sec)
3. Team TietoEnator Audi (38hrs 28min 57sec)

Results, Nokia Oops Cup overall after 6 rounds:
1. Team HiQ, 15 points
2. Team Nokia Academy, 14 points
3. Team TietoEnator Audi, 9 points