The 41st International 505 Class World Championship ended yesterday in dramatic fashion. While the top five teams were almost tied going into the penultimate race, four time World Champion Krister Bergstrom and crew Martin Westerdahl's 2nd in that race gave them an 8 point lead going into the final race, with Howard Hamlin/Cam Lewis of the USA in second, and Paul Towers/Dan Johnson 0.7 points behind them in third.
The race was held on the primary course, north of the Townsville Sailing Club, between the club and Magnetic Island, in conditions similar to what we had seen for most of the championship. Wind was about 11-14 knots, at the high end of marginal trapezing, a little lighter than most of the other races.
The first start was recalled, but the second attempt got off OK. Towers/Johnson rounded the windward mark first, and looked behind them for Bergstrom/Westerdahl and Hamlin/Lewis. Bergstrom/Westerdahl were nowhere to be seen. Towers/Johnson held the lead at every mark and won the race. Hamlin/Lewis pulled up to 4th at the finish.
Once ashore, the fleet learned that Bergstrom/Westerdahl had hit the gate launch and retired. Since they had already retired from an earlier race, they had to count one of the retirements, which pulled them down to 16th overall.
Towers/Johnson are the new 505 World Champions, Hamlin/Lewis were 2nd, '93 World Champions Ian Barker/Dan Cripps were 3rd, '92 and '94 World Champions and '96 Australian Champions, Chris and Darren Nicholson of Australia were 4th. Complete results are in another e-mail.
The general consensus among the competitors was that this was the best ever 505 World Championship. Townsville Sailing Club, a very small, young club, and the local 505 fleet led by John Whitbread ran an incredible event for the class. There are too many people to thank, but in addition to John Whitbread, Pam Whitbread and Helen Murdoch who ran the regatta office, did the results, organized the social events, and helped the competitors out with faxes, phone calls, messages and so on are due special thanks.
The 505 class is very strong, with world championships attended by 13 countries this year and 14 last year. The class ran two simulataneous 97+ boat regattas, as the Le Lavandou Europa Cup event with 97 505s ran April 5-7, during the 505 Pre-worlds and Australian Championships. Recent growth has resulted in new North American fleets, one of which applied for fleet status during the worlds.
See you in Denmark for the '97 Worlds and Cape Cod Massachussets for the '98 Worlds if I don't see you at the European Championships first!
Ali Meller