Haspa Hamberg have completed their qualifying passage via the delivery of the yacht from Heligoland to Kiel from June 10th to June 13th.
The crew on board during the qualification delivery was as follows:
- Torben Mühlbach (Person in charge)
- Anika Sprakel
- Arne Wittemer
- Bijan Hatam
- David Manherz
- Jan Groenewold
- Lennart Eberlein
- Marvin Schlesiger
- Thore Petersen
This represents 75% of the racing crew which is more than the NoR requirements.
Deviating from the planned route round Skagen (Denmark), the predicted weather conditions of +50kn gusts headwind caused them to pass through the Kiel Canal due to two reasons.
First, based on the rules of good seamanship they wanted to risk neither the crew’s health nor the material and second, the predicted weather conditions in the Baltic Sea let them have greater freedom in practicing under the expected weather conditions of the Cape2Rio Race. It would not have been responsible to sail in an area of a predicted storm when there is an alternative.
During the passage of the Kiel Canal, they theoretically discussed various emergency scenarios and countermeasures. On top of that, they shared their knowledge about all details of the yacht – especially the emergency and rescue equipment.
After passing the Kiel Chanel overnight, they directly continued the trip rounding the islands Langeland, Samsö and Fyn rounding Langeland again followed by a passage of the Svendborgsund before returning to Kiel where they arrived Thursday evening.
The weather conditions in the Baltic Sea ranged from 2-25kn of wind with passing thunderstorms on Wednesday afternoon. During the trip round Fyn, they practiced several sailing maneuvers using a variety of up and downwind sails.
On top of the sailing maneuvers, they practiced various emergency measures eg. the emergency steering devices and got used to a daily routine in our preferred watch system.
The overall covered distance during this 4 day nonstop passage was 560nm, of which 440nm were sailed.
Report submitted by Torben Mühlbach
(Skipper GER 6300)
