This year the German Nationals were held on a very special spot: For the first time a dinghy race took place on Germany´s one and only Off-Shore-Island Helgoland, which is located about 80 km from the shore in the middle of North Sea. Helgoland has a beautyful landscape, one side provides a steep shore made of red rocks the other side a little village, habour and a yachtclub. To walk around the island takes you about an hour, which is far enough for all the tourists that come there for a daytrip to buy tax free. When they left in the evening the island was in the hand of 40 505 teams.
First question for the organisation of the event was how to get all your stuff, boats and sailing gear there since on the island is no car nor bikes allowed. It turned out the transportation was perfectly well organised by some of the local nothern 505 sailors that managed to have a free ferry for boats and bags. So everybody had to show up at 6:00 o´clock on Saturday morning to make 505-sandwiches to crane these packs on the ferry. After that everybody went (with some beers for all the work done in the early morning) to the tourist ferry to get to the island which takes about 2,5 hrs.
As well as the organisation for transportion worked the "chartered" race comittee from Berlin. First day we had a practice race at nearly no wind to get used to the strange current in that area and to the seals that were our spectators. Coming ashore we found a booth for free beer in the middle of the dinghy park later accompanied by a barbecue grill spending the week with us. Second day was medium wind, strange current as well and some waves. From the first day the crew Hunger/Jess were leading the fleet and confirmed their result on day two which was one of THE days to go sailing. We had Beafort Force 5-6 wind and due to the shallow water and current in the open ocean we had a dream of waves of up to 5 meters in height. So that was one of the unforgettable sailing days in your life.
Next day the dream of waves turned into a nightmere, because there was no wind and we had to wait on the water for some time. Being used to the flat water of our local mountain lakes me - and some others - started to get green faces. I asked Markus to seperate a little bit from the fleet while sitting to leeward in the boat waiting for death to come and listening to a helmsman making fun of me. After a while ashore everything was o.k. again and everybody had a free beer of the World Champion Bet. The last day the female crews showed their sensitive sailing skills at light air with Claire (with some help from Ian) winning the race followed by Angela / Markus and Ute / Olaf followed by the Doc/Holgi (=Hunger/Jess), who are our new German Champions. Second overall as so many times before became Stefan Böhm /Gerald Roos followed by Tom Gosch / Rolf Meyer. Congratulations!!!
Next day everybody packed the boats again except Michael who arrived single handed in Helgoland (10 hrs sailing at night) and left the same way. No problem for him; beeing Jesus he could always walk on the water and tow the boat.
Summary: we had a great time, thanks to the guys who made that event happpen, especially to the "ferry packers" and the race commitee. General results will be available on the German Homepage soon.
Angela
GER 8671