With a new record fleet of 61 offshore yachts at the start in 2008, the fourth edition of the Baltic Sprint Cup for blue-water crews will for the first time set off in Germany. The festive background of the kick-off to this two-week offshore race between five Baltic rim countries will be the 119th Travemuende Week. The first 216-nautical mile leg to Karlskrona, Sweden will be the highlight of the first race day of the ten-day regatta event in the port town which is part of Luebeck. The first starting gun will be fired on Saturday, 19 July at 3 p.m.

The wide range of yacht types that take part is split into a racing division that uses the ORC Rating System (40) and IRC (21). It comprises boats as different as Peter Pink’s Hamburg-based Adios, and twelve-metre Zampano of Carsten Höhne from Delmenhorst, as well as Lithuanian Ambersail, who under her former name of Assa Abloy already withstood the most challenging ocean race around the world, and British Yeoman XXXII of David Aisher, Commodore of the Royal Ocean Racing Club, London. German flags will mix with their counterparts from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Poland and even the USA and the British Virgin Islands and make this fourth edition of the Baltic Sprint Cup more international than ever before.

From Swedish Karlskrona, the fleet will continue on a 190-mile leg to Klaipeda in Lithuania, where the 450 sailors will join in the celebrations of the port city’s famous Sea Festival. The third leg, and the shortest of all with only 111 nautical miles, will lead the crews to Gdynia, Poland. Two short in-port races on 29 July will constitute yet another novelty in the Baltic Sprint Cup set up out on then Bay of Gdansk waters. These two races will count as an equivalent to the other legs. The final race of the 710 nautical miles overall (around 1,300 kilometres) will start a day after that to cover 171-nautical mile distance to the port of Rønne on the Danish island of Bornholm, where the overall winner will be honoured on 1 August.

„I think the compact race course and the start during Travemuende Week are the key factors for the enormous interest,“ says Baltic Sprint Cup organizer Henning Rocholl from SAIL & RACE. When the event manager from Hamburg staged the much-noted race debut back in 2005 and put a lot of effort towards its instant success, he never dreamed that this pan-Baltic regatta would year after year attract so much interest. When entries came flocking in in high numbers this spring, the organizers even found themselves forced to close the list early.

For the organizers of Travemuende Week, the BSC presented a logistical challenge, with berthing space being tight during the traditional race week. “But of course we make room for guests who bring their racing machines of up to 25 metres of length here,“ say Karin Böge and Claus-Dieter Stolze from the organizing Luebeck Yacht Club, “So we are more than happy to integrate the Baltic Sprint Cup.” The club will also send its youth crew on board the club-owned yacht Meu around the Baltic. The big boat parade at 1 p.m. on Saturday, 19 July between Travepromenade und Nordermole will offer spectacular views on the BSC fleet.

Including a glimpse of the favourites, among them two sister ships of the Yeoman XXXI, a Rogers 46: They are Mike Castania’s Danebury from the USA, and the Guts ’n’ Glory of Christopher Wuttke from Bückeburg in Lower Saxony. Wuttke’s company „SE Spezial-Electronic AG“ will be hosting the start-up party in Travemünde’s Columbia Hotel Casino, where the patron of the 119th Travemuende Week, Wolfgang Tiefensee, will hold a speech at the official opening ceremony of Travemuende Week. The German Federal Minister of Transport will also be there when the Mayor of Luebeck, Bernd Saxe will fire the BSC starting gun on Saturday afternoon.

The biggest yacht of the fleet will be the maxi-racer Calypso owned by Gerhard Clausen from Hamburg. The 25 metres long former Wild Thing was built in Melbourne, Australia, and has the fastest rating. She will be challenged by Tilmar Hansen from Kiel with his Elliott 52 Outsider, who strives to win the race. „With competition like this, we will have to prove that we are really as fast as we think we are,“ says owner and skipper Hansen, who once won the legendary Admiral’s Cup. His experienced crew includes tactician Jörg Heinritz (Heiligenhafen) and navigator Ole Satori.

Hardly anybody else lives the spirit of the Baltic Sprint Cup as authentically as Tilmar Hansen: „If it weren’t for the encounters with the people in these breathtaking port cities of Scandinavia and the Baltic states, the sportive side of this regatta would only be half the fun.“ And this is exactly the kind of friendly fostering of the pan-Baltic trade relations that Sven Herlyn had intended when he initiated the race four years ago. This time, the boss of the main sponsor DnB Nord Bank from Copenhagen will be racing himself on board his Luffe 40 Red ’n’ Hot. From the smallest yacht Flying Circus (10.31 metres) of Wolfgang Uecker from Luebeck, Herlyn will be racing against a wide and varied range of yachts, including the winner of the 2005 edition, Emil Reiseschwein of Stefan Hummelt (Buxtehude). Also among the fleet: Norddeutsche Vermögen Hamburg of the Hamburgischer Vereins Seefahrt (HVS) led by skipper Jan Gallbach and the three all-female crews DHH Cross-Match (Sabine Jüttner-Storp, Glücksburg), KPMG (Inken Braunschmidt, Dortmund) and TUI (Kirsten Harmstorf, Hamburg).