One crazy race at the German Open, but fantastic Gin Tonics

written by Roman Koch  on  May 9  of  2025 and read by 135

The finish
@Sigrid Dietzel

19 teams from 3 nations (4?) arrived at Cossi, the lake near Leipzig to race the German Open. The preparation, all administrative works had been done in a perfect way plus everyday events already scheduled.

After all entries procedures were cleared the whole fleet met Thursday at Sole Mio, the Italian restaurant in the club area and had a relaxed evening.

Today the wind forecast was light and with challenging conditions, and the RC went out to check the situation, the one was not really good, but after drifting a bit around, some wind settled at the lake and the first race got under way.

The whole first beat had been under huge wind shifts and lump areas, these differences meant places with 8 knots and places with no wind and/or huge angle difference, so at the first windward mark 3 clear groups of competitors were coexisting at the race course: the left group, lead by GER 339 (Donald Lippert, Tim Giesecke and Sven Rikwald), which got suddenly wind from nowhere, the right group, which was around 200 meters behind and the third group, hunting the fleet from appr. 400 meters behind.

Do you think this was hard? it got worse, since some shifts of 90 degrees and areas with no wind changed from time to time! The first group, at this point the lead was the local heroes GER 224 (Leo Bergk, Timo Friedrich and Alex Hahn), who went away to win the race with their local knowledge, followed by GER 339 and GER 308 the wind sniffer (Burshi Haist, Martin Zeileis and Irene Haist), the second group struggled a bit and the third group rounded the windward mark, but had now a to beat into the leeward gate because at this time the wind shifted 180 degrees. After a while, the wind changed back, and the last boat finished 1 leg and a half behind the winner…

It was not a perfect start for the championship, but sunshine and the Gin-Tonic-party after the race - sponsored by LongHorn - on a jetty helped some teams to forget the bad race… tomorrow is another day, hopefully another forecast as well.

Complete Results


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The fleet downwind separation
@Sigrid Dietzel

The Solings at the morring
@Alex Hasenclever

The sunset at the Yacht Club
@Sigrid Dietzel