2012 Midsummer Night Race, Baltic Sea, Germany

In action. Photo, Benedict Dassow

Jurgen Zimmermann did the Midsummer Night Race in the Baltic Sea, northern Germany, with two friends as part of the 2012 Summer Sailstice. Below he tells us what happened. Read on! (Photos by Benedict Dassow.)

The Summer Sailstice also happened here in Northern Germany. Three of our Corsair fleet, Frank Bode with his Corsair Sprint 750, Hans-Walter Frieling with his Corsair F28AC and myself with my Corsair F31UC, together with our crews, joined the locally organised Midsummer Night Race in our beautiful Baltic Sea patch together with 45 single (mono) hull entrants.

Racing was very keen from the start at 7.00 pm at a force 4 to 5 wind. However,, soon the expected decrease set in and made sailing a very pleasant celebration of nature. The weather was fair with very expressive cloud cover.

At about 22.30 hrs, when we had done more than half of the race course, darkness set in and tactical navigation became the main concern. Where am I? Where are the others?

With regard to the end result, Frank did extremely well with his shorthanded crew finishing after 6h 59m - only 21 minutes after the first boat home, a very well equipped Luffe 45. Also Hans-Walter did very well. About my own performance I can only say that it is correct that the race leader called me in order to find out where the f . . I was! But, no, the search party was not sent out yet. . .

I am attaching a few shots done by my youngest crew Benedict Dassow during the race (these photos can be seen on Corsair's Facebook page).