NORD/LB Baltic Sprint Cup 2005 - Leg 1 finish

"Tutima" wins first leg of the NORD/LB Baltic Sprint Cup 2005

Light and variable wind all the way from Sandhamn to Finland

Helsinki. The brand new DK 46 “Tutima” owned by Frankfurt based clockmaker Tom Ebert won the first leg of the NORD/LB Baltic Sprint Cup 2005. Although they experienced only light and variable wind all the way his crew needed not much more than 23 hours on the shortened course about 140 nautical miles from Sandhamn, Sweden to a finish line set at mark Ajax near Hanko in Finland. “Tutima” was the second boat over the line, but beat the first ship home “Outsider” (Tilmar Hansen/Kiel) on corrected time. “Outsider” came sixth on handicap because some smaller yachts gained on the last miles when a South-westerly breeze freshened a bit.

“We were becalmed for a couple of hours and drifted more sideway than moved forward”, said Tom Ebert on the way to Helsinki, where the original destination of the first leg is located at Nyländska Jaktklubben (NJK). “The boat performed quite well, but we could have done better”, continued the skipper, still surprised, but very satisfied indeed. They had misjudged the course right after the start in Sandhamn after VHF problems occurred on board. Leading the pack out of the archipelago “Tutima” passed the first turning mark instead of rounding it. Only five minutes later they turned back but recovered quickly from their fault.

After crossing the finish line a bottle of champagne was opened in the cockpit of the J-109 “Brinkmann & Partner”– but no spray, they drank everything. “We’ve just took the weather forecast given by Meeno Schrader and our strategy was done. This worked out pretty well”, explained helmsman Frank Sothmann from Hamburg. Bertold Brinkmann added: “We’ve watched the race tracker on www.NordLBCup.com every full hour and saw how we pro-ceeded. So we became happier and happier by every single poll.”

A nice performance on the water was also shown by the Estonian entry “Ladybird”. They crossed the line in a pack of bigger boats just in front of the two sister ships “World of TUI Hamburg” three length ahead of “Hansa” (both from Hanseatic Yachting School Gluecks-burg). But their strong handicap pushed them out of the top ten in the ranking list. The last boats were expected in Hanko late at Sunday night. The time limit exceeds at 8 a.m. on Mon-day morning local time.

Preliminary results of leg 1 on corrected time:

1. Tutima (Tom Ebert/Frankfurt)
2. Brinkmann&Partner (Bertold Brinkmann/Hamburg)
3. Schüddelfrost (Friedrich Böhnert/Hamburg)
4. Glüxboks (Markus Balke/Solingen)
5. Emil Reiseschwein (Stefan Hummelt/Buxtehude)
6. Outsider (Tilmar Hansen/Kiel)
7. Meltemi (Harald Graf Saurma-Jeltsch/Eckernförde)
8. Sneagle (Thomas Werner/Hanstedt)
9. Anne Bonny (Hans-Jürgen Färber/Heiligenstedten)
10. Xtra Fun (Horst F. Figge-Jänke/Jever)