Event


An elite heritage


The legendary North Sea Regatta Week is back on the world stage and firing on all cylinders


Germany’s North Sea Week is celebrating its comeback to the international race calendars. Once a major hub of the international offshore elite and a unique stage for spectacularly exciting One Ton Cups and Admiral’s Cup trials, Germany’s only real offshore regatta series in the North Sea today has developed into a multi-faceted event with a modern face. The 100-year-old “Nordseewoche” is back on course for a bright future. Part of its success is the sailing


marathon Pantaenius Round Skagen Race. Held every two years, the challenging 510-mile course is among the oldest and most popular offshore races the sailing world has to offer. Just seven years younger than the famous Rolex Fastnet Race and 13 years older than the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race, the course of the Pantaenius Round Skagen Race takes its fleet through three completely different stretches of water. Starting against the backdrop of the red rock of Germany’s only true high seas island, Helgoland, the race also tests its competitors in the notorious Skagerrak and finishes in the Baltic Sea port of Kiel, the “City of Sails” and the home of Kiel Week. Those who were involved in the


72 SEAHORSE


North Sea Week’s glorious heydays between the 1960s and the 1990s, will certainly remember the high caliber of racing at the time. Super- popular were the One Ton Cups in 1968 and 1969. In 1968, Hans Beilken’s crew on the Dick Carter- designed Optimist won the fiercely contested championship. In 1969, Chris Bouzaid’s Sparkman & Stephens 36 Rainbow II left the fleet behind. The waters off Helgoland also became famous for the toughest German, and sometimes also international, Admiral’s Cup trials and training ground. Any crew training here was more than well-prepared for the Solent and the Fastnet Race. In 1973, Helgolandmarked the


summit of German offshore racing. The crews were unfazed by force eight and the steepest of seas. Some crews did not even drop their spinnakers at night.With that endurance test in their bag, a German teamconsisting of Albert Büll’s Saudade, Dieter Monheim’s Carina III and Hans-Otto Schümann’s Rubin won the Admiral’s Cup for the very first time. Six years later, a legendary 19


yachts competed for three spots in the German Admiral’s Cup Team. Threemore German Admiral’s Cup


Top: North Sea Week offers top quality racing and often serves up challenging conditions. Above: TP52 teams are among the competitors


wins followed until the last in 1993. And the foundation for victory was mostly laid in the North Sea. Remember 1995 when the Kiwis


robbed the America’s Cup from Dennis Conner? Young superstar Russell Coutts barely had the time to celebrate victory in San Diego before the always imaginative German owner, Thomas Friese, persuaded Coutts to fly immediately to the small German island of Helgoland, together with some of his Kiwi comrades-in-arms, to support Friese’s two-boat campaign. In a fierce exchange of blows in the German trials for the 1995 Admiral’s Cup, it was Thomas-I-Punkt against


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