Monday, July 13, 2015

J/22 Worlds Preview

J/22s sailing upwind (Travemunde, Germany)- Imagine, you awake from a horn, hear the seagulls that follow a fishing boat and the leaves sweep in the wind. After a short swim in the Baltic Sea and a breakfast with your sailing tribe, you rig your J into ready-to-race-mode and relax under the sun. After 3 exhausting races in 14 kts breeze, you drink a beer at the pier and you could not turn away your eyes from the amazing pictures of the day. Right next to you the German J/22 Class President is trying to draw a perfect freezing cold German beer!  Are you hallucinating by now?  Perhaps not.

The slogan for this year’s J/22 Worlds is “to our guests, with friends”.  Of course, unfortunately, the German sailors cannot affect the weather conditions, but we hope for a good breeze and sunshine.

Travemünde Week is one of the biggest sailing events in Germany with more than 1,600 sailors from all over the world and some other sailing classes will have their championships during that week.  Most importantly, the docks for the J/22 class are located directly in front of the big Travemünde promenade. J/22 sailors will have a tent available for the whole week, located close to the pier.

The forty-four J/22 teams from six countries registered are looking forward to the extraordinary hospitality offered by the Travemünder Woche team.  Germany, Netherlands, France, Canada, Cayman Islands, and USA all have top teams that hope to make their mark in the 2015 edition of one of the world’s most popular international offshore keelboat classes.  From the host country Germany, teams like Bernhard Becht’s BEBE, Christian Fliegel’s JAZZ, Christian Rieckborn’s JOLLY JUMPER, Martin Menzner’s JABULANI, and Sven Hartog’s MOJO4ROOKIES should be factors in the overall leaderboard.

The Netherlands are well represented with Lisanne Nijdam’s BIG ROLL/ TU DELF BROACH BERING, Jean-Michel Lautier’s FRAPORITA, and Tim van Batenburg’s DJINN.

Other top teams that have been at the forefront of major J/22 events includes Patrick Huet’s EUROPEAN HOMES from France, Mike Farrington’s JUST LEAVING from the Cayman Islands (third in the 2014 J/22 Worlds), and Chris Doyle’s THE JUG 41 from Youngstown YC in Youngstown, New York.  For more J/22 Worlds sailing information