Express-SM Race Report Day 3 (final day)

"Josefin" at Lökholmen after the final race. She served as tender boat to Express 978. Very practical and compared to the Express - very comfortable.

Express 978 being towed home by "Josefin" after the final race day. Sandhamn is in the background.

We won't put the 9th and final race in any of our CVs, that's for sure. Although we did not make all that many clear mistakes we still could not keep up with competition during the tacking routine and slowly but (very) surely we dropped through the field. Today's race left us with a 27th postion overall among 36 boats starting. Considering the fact that we simply never practice on Express 978 - we've actually just sailed Lidingö Runt once before in this crew setup - we are quite happy with the result. The Express class is still one of the most competitive in Sweden so expecting to get anything "for free" is simply naive. I would like to congratulate the winning boat - Henri Lloyd Sailing Team - to a phenomenal race suit. Also Björn Österberg as runner up had an impressive suite (4 wins of 9 races...).

Although a major mistake was made by the KSSS organizers this morning - we had to wait more than an hour for our start because they had placed a different race track in the middle of ours... - I have to say that the race all in all was a great success from an organizational perspective. I was very impressed by the positive attitude and service minded approach all parts of the KSSS organization showed. Very professional and still extremely friendly. Being far from a "Sandhamn fan" myself I have to say that this really improved my view of KSSS. I look forward to the next "east coast SM" in 2013.