|
Business before pleasure is what they say. Well, let me tell you one
thing: Those that chose whatever business they had over joining the 25th
anniversary of the International Waterbike Regatta made a BIG mistake.
This year the regatta was held on the 7th and 8th of May in beautiful
Grünau, near Berlin at the old Olympic rowing track. With close to 250
participants from all over Europe, bringing a total of 28 boats the
turnout was excellent and the event was ready to start, but not before
warmly welcoming those heroes from Hamburg who had sailed their boat
Clementine all the way from their home town to Berlin: 400 km in only six
days!
On Thursday night, the ice-breaking party set the pace for the rest of
the event by quickly turning into a mixing and mingling of a very
substantial part of all participants and for some people almost turning
into an all-nighter. Still, friday morning meant time for some serious
business: Boats were unloaded from the various cars & trailers and
assembled. Those not immediately busy with readying the boats got their
first chance of having a look at other people's boats and sniff out the
competition, and competition there was: Macbath (Delft), Close to
Perfection (Duisburg), Caipiroska (Genova), Clementine, Fhuntastic (Flensburg)
and other well proven boats were here again, as well as a number of new
boats like monohull Dumlupinar (Istanbul) and hydraulically powered
catamaran Pegula (Zagreb). One of the most spectacular-looking newcomers,
Voith-Schneider propelled Mostly Harmless from Berlin, unfortunately did
her name proud by not being finished in time to participate.
For the first time this year a new Old-timer category was introduced,
featuring the all-powerful l'Ordegno (Trieste), Clementine (yes, here as
well), Lattenjammer (Berlin), Waterspeed Holiday (Andreas Schlieff's boat)
and Argo (Duisburg).
With these and more boats all prepared, it was time for the day's
races: the first rounds in the slalom and 100 m sprint events as well as
the entire acceleration test, previously known as burn-out. The day was
ended with the 10 km long distance race, which was convincingly won by
l'Ordegno. However since she only participated in the Old-timer category,
the race for the real prizes was a neck-a-neck battle between Caipiroska,
Close to Perfection, Clementine and Macbath which resulted in Macbath
beating Clementine by a boat length.
With the races finished for the day, it was then time for a wholesome
dinner and some serious partying. The Friday night party turned out to be
best of the three and lasted all night for those who did not need to
perform the next day.
Saturday, the closing day of the event, featured the finals of the
slalom and 100m sprint events as well as the secret mission and bollard
pull events. The sprint was won by Close to perfection, with Macbath
winning second place, being a full second slower. After achieving a tie in
the normal bollard pull event, Close to Perfection beat Clementine during
a good old-fashioned Tug of War (this time called the Golden Expander)
Being a proud member of the Delft team myself, I feel the need to tell
you the results of the slalom and secret mission events as the story of
two little girls who put all the well (or not so well) trained men in the
event to shame. Driving Macbath, they demonstrated that brute force is a
highly overrated quality in waterbiking. Using their own mixture of Delft
bluntness and feminine grace, they left all others far (i.e. multiple
seconds) behind in the slalom, with Clementine in second place and
schottel-propelled monohull Wederwood (Delft) achieving third place.
During the Secret mission, our ladies left out the Delft bluntness bit and
replaced it with a fabulous sense of direction (you're as puzzled as I am…)
and balance: The race entailed the pilot being blindfolded and given
directions by the co-pilot, who in Macbath sits backward, rounding a buoy,
taking of the blindfold, the two people changing places in mid-water and
sprinting back to the finish. I don't know if you've ever tried to stand
up in Macbath, but I highly recommend it if you want to go for a nice
little swim. Still, racing blindly for the buoy (maybe not being
distracted by the view helped??) and climbing over each other and most of
Macbath, they left all competition in their wake and won the event. Shame
on all the big boys in their nice stable catamarans with forward looking
co-pilots!
After the races, it was time for the prize giving for the innovation
prize: Berlin's Rumpur, after many years of technical difficulty finally
functioning properly, won third prize and Istanbul's Dumlupinar came in
second. The first prize was justly awarded to the hydraulic drive system
on Pegula.
After dinner, it was time for the official prize giving in both the
old-timer and 'real' categories. In the Old-timer class, l'Ordegno was the
easy winner, but the overall first prize in the 'real' category changed
hands for the first time in 7(!) years. After the undefeated reign of
l'Ordegno, which lasted for six years, the battle for first prize was a
very close one between Clementine, which won it for the last time eleven
years ago, and Macbath. In the end it was Macbath who won the event by a
nose length. Still at least one Hamburg team member exuded so much
happiness at Clementine's achieved result (yes Clemens, you) that few will
forget it any time soon.
Finally, during the closing party, the European waterbiking community
again showed that prizes are just pieces of metal (in fact, rather heavy
steel plates this time) and that participating is more important than
winning. People from the various teams spread out over the room, met new
friends and some partied till dawn.
Then it was all over again, people got up on Sunday and left one by
one, already eagerly anticipating the next events in Eutin (June), on the
Worthersee (August) and in Bremen (next year).
To finish this article in a proper way, my thanks (and I'm sure the
thanks of all participants) go out to those great waterbikers from Berlin
who invested an enormous amount of time in the organization of the event.
People, your efforts paid off bigtime, we were impressed!
PS: The official 2004 International Waterbike Regatta site: www.iwr2004.hf-latte-berlin.de
PS2: for more information on Clementine's monster voyage to
Berlin: www.tine-goes-to-berlin.de
Coming up soon: Racing results!
|
)
)
)