Culture 2011 Tall
Ships Regatta – a summary from the Race Chairman
This Regatta was
specially organised by Sail Training International to mark Turku being the
European Capital of Culture in 2011. It
was a great opportunity to link the tall ships fleet with cultural activities
and to emphasise that sailing ships do have a cultural value. With Turku, obviously, being the centre port
of this Regatta, Klaipeda and Gdynia played excellent roles as the start and
finish ports. The events in all three ports were very well organised and many
hundreds of thousands of visitors have enjoyed the visits of the tall ships fleet.
Race 1
(Klaipeda-Turku) and Race 2 (Turku- Gdynia) were completely different races. Again the weather in the Baltic Sea had shown
her capricious caracter. Race 1, going
west of Gotland, was planned to be a relative easy one with following winds
from the south-west. However the ships
had to fight for every mile of progress because of very light winds. Race 2 was, on paper, only one track from
Turku to Gdynia (east of Gotland). The
reality was far more difficult. This time
the ships had to fight for every mile of progress against strong winds from the
south west and high waves at the start. In the days that followed the wind
varied strongly in the different parts of the Baltic Sea, creating a widely
scattered fleet between the start area south of Turku to the finish area near
Gdynia.
Although the usual
age limit was not in force during this Regatta, the three host ports had
organised groups of trainees. Together
with the large number on board the big Class A ships, there were about 500
trainees in the relatively small tall ships fleet. For all of them the two races provided an excellent
opportunity to experience sail training in varying and sometimes difficult
situations.
We have welcomed
new ships to the fleet as well as old members who returned after some years of
absence and it was wonderful to see them all.
As the fleet head
off now to their home ports or new destinations, I wish them all fair winds and
following seas and look forward to seeing them at the Tall Ships Races and
Regattas in the future.
Robin Snouck
Hurgronje, Chairman of Race Committee