By Magnus Liljedahl
Germany is like my third home in the world. I went to boarding school there in 10 grade and it is in Kiel where my olympic quest begun many moons ago. In short, I love it there, so no wonder when Mark Medelblatt asked me to crew for him at the "2010 Kieler Woche" I didn't hesitate.
I took the ferry down from Göteborg to Kiel, a 12-hour journey that is much like a cruise. Mark and his fiancee Carolina picked me up at the ferry terminal. Mark's Star boat would arrive the day before the regatta started, so we did't have any time for practice. The hull on his almost new Mader Star had delaminated and needed major repair. We hung around the regatta scene for a couple of days and then the boat was promptly delivered from the boat builder in southern Germany.
The frist day of racing was pretty windy. We barely made it out to start on corse "D" in time. My rust was pretty noticeable and our boat handling was sub-par, to say the least. The odd brand, grip-less, gloves that I had purchased the day before didn't make matters any better. We almost lost the rig on the second run as I couldn't pull the backstay tight enough. Short courses and we seemed to over stand on the port lay line every time. But we made it back to port in one piece and in 9th place over all.
A high pressure shut the breeze down for the next couple of days and there was no racing for the Stars. On the forth day we finally got three races in, using the near shore course "H". We needed a stellar day to be in contention for the medal race. We where in position to win all three races, but had to settle for a 5-3-1 which actually won us the day. The new Mader is super fast on the run and we had speed to burn. It put us in third over all.
The medal race appears as joke to me and many others. Why screw up any good event with lottery type sailing to determine the winner? Even though the best sailors usually win, this format s@#ks! We battled from last at the first beat and run to 7th at the finish. We beat both boats ahead of us going in to the medal race. Andy Horton /James Lyne (USA) was OCS (disqualified for being over early). I later looked at some pictures and there had to have been more boats over early. We started to leeward in a lift. The problem with that on a super short course is that there is no time for the wind to shift back. The good news for us was that we retained our podium finish and it all ended on a good note!
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