Letter from Europe

Letter from Europe
June 9, 2009

Sailing in Europe and visiting its many interesting places in conjunction with sailing regattas has always been something I’ve wanted to do. The ending of my year’s sabbatical from work gave me the time to travel there for a week before the ISAF World’s at Medemblik, Holland and then on to southwest France for the Finn World Masters. Instead of chartering a boat for the one week of training and then one week of the regatta, I bought a boat from Jan van der Horst of HIT mast Holland, with the option that he would buy it back when I was done using it. The price of the boat will be amortized over the course of the next few summers sailing more events in Europe, such as the Masters Worlds in Croatia in 2010 and then in 2011 Punta Ala, Italy, which have fleets of 250+ as well as national championships in France, Holland, and the U.K., events which attract fleets of over 60 boats.

The first stop was Medemblik, Holland, arriving by Schiphol Airport, where I rented an Opel station wagon that would become my transportation and my hotel for the next week. The parking lots at Europe’s regattas are filled with campers and tents, so car camping is allowed. Medemblik is a medieval village on a Dutch lake that was created by damming off the North Sea in the 1930’s. It provides open water sailing and is a training center for the Dutch National sailing team, as well as Germans for whom it’s easier to get to than Kiel, the center of German sailboat racing. Finn sailor P.J. Postma as well as the Dutch Yngling team, who got a silver medal in China with their unorthodox strategy of training 9 women and only deciding the final three a few days before the regatta, base their campaigns there.

The U.S. Sailing Team AlphaGraphics (USSTAG) had a well-organized effort there in preparation for the regatta. High performance director Kenneth Andreasen was there, and Bunny Warren was hired to coach the Finn team of Zach Railey, Andy Casey, Bryan Boyd, and Ian Cook. USSTAG owns two RIB’s in Europe and is renting a third. Warren ran practices and then practice races which attracted 27 boats. The US team’s largesse was much appreciated by the Olympic hopefuls from the many assembled nations.

On the day the Delta Lloyd regatta started in Holland, I drove south to Dronten, Holland, to Jan van der Horst’s farm, which is the headquarters for HIT (Horst Innovative Technologies), where Jan had arranged for another Jan Kingma (THE KINGMAN), who is the 71 year-old Finn Master Worlds webmaster, to drive my boat and his on a double trailer to the masters regatta in France, a 1200 kilometer trip through Belgium, Normandie, and into the Bordeaux region. We were part of a caravan of Finns, as HIT mast Holland was chartering 20 boats for the event, five of which were on a trailer behind a Peugeot van and three of which on a trailer behind Horst’s Hymer caravan.

On the way, we stopped at Roderic Cassandre’s (NED 8) castle in the Loire Valley region of France. Cassandre sailed Finns back in the day when Willie Kuhweide was king of the fleet and now regularly places in the Gold fleet at the masters worlds. He bought a castle six years ago—why? He told me that ever since he was a little boy he wanted a castle. He and his wife have been renovating it with modern apartments and a 26-seat movie theater, raising chickens, and doing all the things that modern day castle owners do. He said he studied in books about 1500 castles that are on the market in Europe before settling on this one, which has a moat with water in it, a chapel, and a kennel, as well as a turret filled with fliegelmaus (bats), 200 of which flew around uncomfortably close to our heads after we inadvertently disturbed them in the morning daylight.

After a night with the Dutch knight in the castle, the caravan moved on towards Bordeaux. The toll roads all the way cost as much as the gasoline. We took breaks along the way when Margrit van der Horst would have koffie ready for us in the caravan. The sun and warmth increased the more we ventured south. I used the maps feature on my new iphone to monitor our progress while Jan told me stories about the D-Day invasion of Normandy. This was also the area from which the Normans invaded the British Isles in 1066 and laid the basis for what would become modern English—70 percent of English words are of French origin.

At the regatta, the French organizers had a clear and organized procedure to get sails stamped, registration fees paid, and registration packets distributed. The 130 Euro registration fee, which included a bottle of wine, shirt, poster, scarf, drink tickets, 2 meals, snacks, patisserie, use of the club, the easiest beach launching I’ve ever used and whatnot was incredibly fair. It all went very smoothly but on the French time schedule, which was very, as we say in California, laid-back, and subject to the club people taking a very long lunch in the middle of the day. But who cares? We were there at the beach, at the lake, with a boat, and a villa to stay for 9 days for 90 Euros per person. I rented a Gitane bike for 60 Euros and pedaled to and from the regatta site and around the village adjacent to the beach (yes, the women go topless). The tourist village of Maubuisson had just opened for the season the day before we arrived, so the shopkeepers were very pleasant to us—the possibility of gathering fresh Euros melts even the snotiest French attitude. I was the only American at the regatta—when I registered, the lady exclaimed—“The American is here. You have finally arrived. We have been waiting for you to arrive.” Within a day the yacht club staff began addressing me as “Monsieur Charles”. Through some unexplained neurological dynamic, I was able to recall my 1 year of French in graduate school and carry on most of the business of the day in French and read Le Monde in mornings. I’m sure I mangled many verb tenses but nobody seemed to care.

The day’s schedule was a holiday fest—koffie and croissants in the morning, bicycle to the club for the 1 pm start, sail one or two races, return to the club late, pull the boat up on the beach with 3 or 4 sailors helping, and talk about the racing in English accented by Swedish, Dutch, French, Russian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, German, Czech—one of the most amazing finds was that Finn master sailors speak English really well and they were very capable of distinguishing between the lame-ass behaviour of the Bush government and ordinary Americans, whose character, culture and personalities they still admire. At the most basic level, we are all Finn sailors—in love with the boat and the “Finn ethic”. After the club scene dwindled, bicycle 4 km back to the club through the forest and enjoy the evening twilight until 10 pm—it didn’t become pitch black until nearly 11 every night.

The regatta concluded with a long prize giving ceremony in the French style. On Saturday we packed the boats in intermittent rain, the only day with rain. Then, we proceeded in the caravan north to Holland with a stop in a transit hotel (60 Euro/night) just north of Paris. I left my boat in storage at Horst’s farm (later to be transported to the Gold Cup in Denmark), took the train to Amsterdam, where I was on a mission to return to the flat on Nieuwe Keizersgracht where I spent the winter of 1977. That experience is another chapter—only to say now that they have some strange coffee in Amsterdam. I read about it in a Rich Steves column—you don’t drink it, you smoke it. And afterwards I got really lost on my rented (7.50 Euro/day) one speed Dutch bicycle circling around North Amsterdam trying to find my way back to Centraal Station.

--Charles Heimler (for more reports check out the blog at charlesheimler.blogspot.com)

Finn Master Worlds 2009 Gathers 264 to Maubuisson, France

Champion du Monde Finn Veteran 2009, June 1-5

Two hundred sixty four Finn sailors ranging in age from 40-86 assembled in Maubuisson, France on a lake near Bordeaux for the 39th edition of this event, attracting participants from 21 nations to the host club Cercle de Voiles Bordeaux, Carcans, Maubuisson (CVBCM) for the annual regatta organized by the Finn World Masters.
German Andre Budzien, sailing a Pata B4 with Pata Willets mast and a North poly, won his third world championship on the final day in the Gold fleet after a four day qualifying series of 130 boats in flight races. (For complete results, go to finnworldmaster.com)
For Friday’s race, the fleet was split into two groups of about 130. The winds were generally were moderate northeasterlies for the first two days, then two days of light and shifty, and on Friday a southwesterly of 15 knots appeared. The French club provided libations, patisseries, fresh oysters and other snacks after each day’s racing, while the club bar had food, liquor, and espressos available all the time.
At Sunday’s opening ceremony following the practice race, Finn World Master president Fons van Gent (NED 748) welcomed the sailors and their companions after a contingent from each nation carried their national flag banner to the accompanying national anthem. Several counties had their whole squad march in the ceremony in a show of support for all their nation’s sailors. The last country to walk-in was France, led by 86-year old Didier Poissant, a former Olympian. The recognition of the world’s Finn sailors at the opening ceremony helped create an atmosphere of international cooperation and sportsmanship.
The host club, CVBCM, is situated beside the Lake of Carcans, which is surrounded by sandy beaches and the Bombannes Forest of pine trees and deer. It is one of the best places for bike path touring between the lake, the forest, and the ocean 3 km away. Maubuisson is a small tourist village that caters to middle-class French on holiday. Its shops, ATM machines, and restaurants only opened for the season on the day before the Finn World Masters began.
The regatta format was 1-2-2-1-1, seemingly a leisurely scheduled, but a half hour to hour sail to the course followed by a one hour sail back in made for some long days, especially when each race usually required one general recall, an I flag, and then a black flag to get a proper start. With 130 sailors of extreme experience and skill in each race, spots on the line were a premium and many paid a penalty as there was seldom even a line sag to find a starting spot within.
The courses were the traditional Olympic triangle, which rewarded those who had a knack for getting in phase with the wind on the three beats in each race, as the races often saw 40 degree shirts and deep holes when the wind was light. Finding clear air was, of course, important, and especially so when big clumps of boats on the course created their own wind shadows. Mark rounding pinwheels of twenty or more boats added to the thrill of the racing.
At the Annual Masters Meeting, representatives of Split, Croatia, site of the 2010 World Masters May 23-28, gave information about the regatta. Prevailing winds there are 8-18 and the venue will be the Gold Cup course.
For 2011, Punta Ala, Italy was selected for the Finn World Masters. It will be May 12-17.
It was also announced at the AGM that registration for the regattas will now only be done through the finnworldmasters.com website.

Report by Charles Heimler, USA Finn 32 (see my blog at charlesheimler.blogspot.com)