North Sea Week Preview

(Scheveningen, The Netherlands)- Concurrent to the J/22 Worlds, the Dutch nation of sailors (most of the country) are hosting their famous North Sea Week that starts with two offshore races (the Vuurschepen Race & the RORC North Sea Race) and concludes with the North Sea Offshore regatta series for offshore one-design and IRC/ORC classes.  There is no question an enormous factor in these events are top J/teams in all divisions.

Starting with the kick-off event for the week of offshore sailing, the Vuurschepen Race starts off The Hague and goes across the infamous shipping channel known as “La Manche” (the ditch) over to England.  Then, after a day’s rest, the fleet races back across the same “English Channel” to The Hague in time to participate in the balance of the North Sea Regatta.  In the offshore races, the IRC class has twenty-three boats entered with Sylvain Duprey’s J/111 DJINN, Alain Bornet’s J/109 JAI ALAI, and Kees Mijs’ J/109 ARETHUSA competing against some of the strongest offshore teams in the North Sea.

In the seventeen-boat ORC Doublehanded division, nearly 50% of the starters are extremely competitive J/crews! At the top end of the scale, first to finish honors should be Englishmen Bart Desaunois & Alex van Amstel’s J/133 BATFISH.  But, they will be hunted down hard by a rogue’s gallery of pirates and veterans of the North Sea offshore doublehanded community, like the two J/122 teams that have won a lot of shorthanded events offshore- John van der Starre & Robin Verhoef’s AJETO and Chris Revelman & Pascal Bakker’s JUNIQUE.  If that were not enough fire-power to make most people wince, they all have the following to contend with that are all capable of reaching the podium; like the two J/120s (MAVERICK- Chris Schram/ Ray Roesink and J-QUATTRO- Joost van der Wal/ Bob Weenink); the two J/109s (FIRESTORM- Wim van Slooten/ Jochem Hamstra and YETI- Paul & Marc van der Pol); and the lone J/105- the famous PANTHER sailed by the only all-women team of Yvonne Beusker and Edith Voskamp.

In the thirty-seven boat ORC Division, with of the IRC division boats “double-scoring”, the only additional teams to add in this “fully-crewed” division are the J/109 TEAM HEINER 4 (Nikolaus Knoflacher), the J/109 JITTERS (Frederic de Visser), and the J/92 JINX (Luc Oomen).

Following these two offshore events across the “big’ole ditch” between the UK and the Continent, the J/111 one-design class will have nearly a half-dozen boats racing one-design in their offshore season points series in The Netherlands.  Those five nations represented include Norbert Burkert’s TOP JOB from Germany, Paul van Driel’s SWEENY from the Netherlands, Sebastien de Liedekerke’s DJINN from Belgium, Sigg Joerg’s LALLEKONIG from Switzerland, and Sjaak Haakman’s RED HERRING from The Netherlands.

In addition, the North Sea Regatta will continue to see the next event in the Netherlands National Doublehanded Championship taking place going around the buoys!  All J/crews from the North Sea races will continue to add points to their series with the aim of taking the season by the end of the summer.
For more RORC North Sea Race sailing information  For more North Sea Week/ North Sea Regatta sailing informationAdd to Flipboard Magazine.


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