No chance

Knut Frostad reports on a disappointing but breezy offshore race to Kiel in the Nokia Oops Cup for his Nokia Academy

A broken lock for our headboard car holding the mainsail as well as a broken foil, left us with no chance of winning the last offshore race in Nokia Oops Cup 2006.

After getting a rip in our gennaker right after the start in Malmo, we lost some distance to HiQ and TietoEnator Audi. However, just hours later we caught them up and north of Helsingoer we pulled out a good lead. Then just before rounding the Danish island of Anholt, HiQ passed us by employing smarter strategy, and we both bore off towards the west coast of Sjaelland. The wind picked up to above 30 knots in the middle of the night, and we where catching HiQ. Suddenly our port foil broke with a big bang. Without the foil we lost more than four knots, with the average speed dropping from 31 to 26 knots. As we already also had broken the lock holding the mainsail up and therefore could not get enough tension on the sail, we had no chance of winning the race, unless HiQ had similar problems.

We don't know why the foil broke. It is possible that we hit something in the water, as it was dark and very windy and imposible to see anything floating in the water.

For the rest of the race, we decided to be conservative, as we could not afford any more breakage. Still we managed to round the final lighthouse into Kiel, only 11 minutes behind HiQ, and more than half an hour in front of TietoEnator Audi.

This was a big disapointment for us as this result leaves us with now in best case finishing only one point behind HiQ in the overall score for the Nokia Oops Cup this year. However, we will of course give everything to win the last city race here in Kiel on Saturday.

Results, Malmø to Kiel Offshore Race:
1. Team HiQ
2. Team Nokia Academy
3. Team TietoEnator Audi

Results, Nokia Oops Cup over all after 10 of 11 rounds :
1. Team Nokia Academy, 25 points
2. Team HiQ, 22 points
3. Team TietoEnator Audi, 13 points

The next and final Cup is on Saturday 19 August in Kiel, Germany with course races and Speed Race.