Aarhus, Denmark 24 July – 5 August

With the breeze gusting up to 30 knots, the SAP 505 World Championships have started with a bang in Aarhus, Denmark. Too much of a bang for many of the 126 teams who struggled to complete two gruelling opening heats in this toughest of regattas.

Among the many casualties were some of the favourites for the world title. Gear failure forced the 2007 World Champions, Denmark’s Jan Saugmann and Morten Ramsbæk, to retire after they had been leading race one. Runner-up in last year’s Worlds, Mike Holt and Carl Smit of the USA, profited from the Danes’ demise and moved into the lead, only to suffer their own set of breakdowns. They too, failed to complete either race.

Britain’s Ian Pinnell and Ian Mitchell, former world champions, took up the reins at the front of the pack and sailed a steady race to cross the line first, with USA’s Howie Hamlin and Andy Zinn in second.

In heat two, Hamlin and Zinn took up the lead for a good part of the race, with Germany’s three-time World Champion Wolfgang Hunger and Julian Kleiner in hot pursuit. Hunger attacked up the final beat and Hamlin failed to cover him as closely as he might have done, allowing the German crew to slip past for the winner’s gun.

Hamlin may not have won a race, but he’s leading the regatta after a tough day. He’s happy with that. Runner-up seven times and World Champion in 1999, the legend from Long Beach is competing at his 30th 505 World Championship. Today his experience showed. “Perfect 505 conditions,” he smiled. While others were facing a long evening of boat work, Hamlin’s nine-year-old hull emerged from a tough day unscathed. Zinn looked ready for another two races. “It wasn’t even that windy out there,” he said, an observation that few others would have agreed with. Even by the standards of a world 505 fleet, today was a tough one, with the 25-30 knot breeze combining with the waves to test the crews and equipment to breaking point.

Like the Americans, German team Stefan Bohm and Gerald Roos sailed very consistently to notch up two 3rd places, one point ahead of Hunger/Kleiner. As for Saugmann, who has now used up both of the discards available in this nine-race series, he was philosophical more than upset. “So many things went so wrong today, we have to laugh about it,” he said. “First one of the trapeze rings broke, and then later in the race the spinnaker pulley at the top of the mast broke and the halyard snapped.” With the spinnaker falling in the water they sailed over the soggy sail and did well to avoid a capsize. They had hoped to regroup and get fixed in time for the second race. But when they came ashore they discovered the halyard had sawed its way about 30cm down the front face of the mast. So they have to replace the mast with a new one before tomorrow’s single scheduled race.

Mike Holt is paying the price for racing in a brand new, untested boat that he has borrowed for the Worlds. “We had half an hour sailing in it yesterday,” he shrugged. “The boat is fine, we were going fast today, but the fittings let us down, just not strong enough.” After a broken mainsheet ratchet made the boat much harder to sail, they finally had to retire from race one when the highly-loaded rig adjustment fittings pulled out of their anchor points in the boat. Holt and Smit will be working hard tonight replacing equipment with bigger, heavier stuff that they can be confident will get them through the rest of the regatta. But Smit knew that today was the day that got away. “Those were our conditions, just like sailing at home in San Francisco Bay,” he said. “The breeze is meant to be dropping lighter in the next few days, so it’s going to be hard winning after what happened today.”

The war of attrition has begun. For those who aren’t working on fixing their boats this evening, they might get a chance to go back through all the tracking data and video footage from the race course today. Not that anyone needs to learn the lesson from such a brutal outing. If you keep your boat upright, and if you can keep your boat in one piece, then you’ll do well.

The SAP 505 World Championship takes place in Aarhus, Denmark, from 30 July to 5 August. This regatta is the latest in a series of major sailing championships hosted by the City of Aarhus over the past 10 years, with the Volvo ISAF Youth Worlds having taken place here in 2008 and with a number of major championships scheduled in the near future, including the A-Class Catamaran Worlds in 2011.

The 2010 SAP 505 World Championship is organised by Sailing Aarhus in cooperation with Sport Event Denmark, Sport Aarhus Event and the Danish Sailing Association. With a strong focus on innovation and new technology to promote sailing to a wider audience, Denmark and the City of Aarhus are bidding for the ISAF Worlds 2014, the most prestigious regatta next to the Olympic Games

Follow the 2010 SAP 5O5 world championship on:

http://www.505sapworldchampionship2010.com/mashup

http://www.505sapworldchampionship2010.com/results

http://www.twitter.com/sailingaarhus

http://www.twitter.com/sapsponsors

http://www.youtube.com/user/SAP5o5

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sailingaarhus

http://bambuser.com/channel/sailingaarhus

Having just won the 505 Pre-Worlds Regatta in Aarhus, Denmark, Jorgen and Jacob Bojsen-Møller are looking to continue their winning ways in the SAP 505 World Championships which start tomorrow.

The Danish brothers came agonisingly close to winning the 505 World Championship at the 1978 Worlds, which also happened to take place in Denmark, in Copenhagen. Jorgen recalls those painful memories: “We were leading the regatta going into the last race, but we had been on the shore for the previous two days because of too much wind. Sitting around, I think it allowed our nerves to set in. Anyway, it was decided to have a race on the last day, and it was still very windy. We were leading by a few points from a British team [Peter Colclough and Phil Brown], but we had a very bad discard, so if both boats finished way down the fleet than we would lose.”

The race began well enough for the Danes, and they decided to play it safe downwind in the big breeze. “We didn’t hoist the spinnaker, but Colclough did, so then we hoisted it but it went under the boat, and we capsized,” says Jorgen. “We climbed through the fleet to 8th place, but to win the Worlds we needed 5th or better.” And so the 505 World title would have to wait for another occasion, perhaps 2010.

Having won the warm-up regatta in Aarhus, how do the Bojsen-Møllers fancy their chances of nailing that elusive world title? “We have 32 years more experience since then, four times at the Olympic Games, so if we have a similar situation now I think we will keep our nerve better. You have to stay in the right mood, and back then we were too nervous.” His chance to prove that theory might come very soon, with strong winds predicted for tomorrow on the Bay of Aarhus.

Having won two Olympic medals, a gold and a bronze, Jorgen Bojsen-Møller has nothing to prove to the sailing world, yet he would still like to add to the 505 Worlds trophy to his cabinet. “We will try very hard, but I’m certainly not sure that we will win,” says Jorgen. “There’s a big chance that we won’t win.” With 126 entries from 11 nations, this is a fleet packed with talent.

Finishing 2nd in the Pre-Worlds were another Danish team, the 2007 World Champions Jan Saugmann and Morten Ramsbæk, with the 2008 World Champion Ian Pinnell in third place, crewed by twice World Championship winner Ian Mitchell.

The one that Bojsen-Møller perhaps fears the most is the three-time World Champion from Germany, Wolfgang Hunger. “He didn’t sail all the races in the Pre-Worlds but he is always fast,” says Jorgen. “Howie Hamlin too. He has won the Worlds once and been runner-up many times. Really there are so many boats here with a good chance of winning.”

One thing that has changed since 1978 is the level of media coverage and publicity surrounding the 505 Worlds. With class sponsor, the global software company SAP working closely with the University of Aarhus, there is a plethora of new technology being used to follow every moment of the racing. All boats will be carrying GPS transponders for the live tracking, and six boats will also be carrying cameras on their transoms, generating live footage that will be streaming on the internet. So will having a live camera on board affect the Bojsen-Møller brothers’ performance? “No, not at all,” says Jacob, “except maybe when we want to go to the toilet.”

This evening the 126 sailing teams will meet at the opening ceremony taking place at the Aarhus City Hall. It will be hosted by Marc Perera Christensen, Aarhus City’s alderman for culture, sports and citizens services, the man who will fire the start gun for race one of the Worlds tomorrow.

The SAP 505 World Championship takes place in Aarhus, Denmark, from 30 July to 5 August. This regatta is the latest in a series of major sailing championships hosted by the City of Aarhus over the past 10 years, with the Volvo ISAF Youth Worlds having taken place here in 2008 and with a number of major championships scheduled in the near future, including the A-Class Catamaran Worlds in 2011.

The organisers of the 2010 SAP 505 World Championship are Sailing Aarhus in cooperation with Sport Event Denmark, Sport Aarhus Event and the Danish Sailing Association. With a strong focus on innovation and new technology to promote sailing to a wider audience, Denmark and the City of Aarhus are bidding for the ISAF Worlds 2014, the most prestigious regatta next to the Olympic Games.