Faerderseilasen 2014 - The Oslo-Tristein-Horten Race This Year

The greatest of all Scandinavian races starts this Friday from Aker Brygge, down town Oslo seafront although the annual spectacle does seem to be down in numbers since the finance crisis with it previously being up at a thousand boats.

This year the field is down to 695 entrants so far, hardly trifling! Gone are a couple of the one design classes, the x99s, Beachball 40.7s, and Melges 24 shortened course I notice. Indeed the great white hope of Scandinavian one design, the X35 cannot so far as the entrants stand today, boast their own start group. (over priced and underperforming springs to mind)

The International Folkboats and the Albin Expresses are out in force as the two stalwart fleets of Oslo Fjord, centred in the clubs in and around the capital. Even the King of Norway sails Albin's finest creation to enjoy OD sailing and train for TP52 sailing at the other end of the scale in the Med'.

One class which has always been promising to do big things is the now venerable Bene' First 31.7.  I remember it as a new boat, seems like just a few years ago it had a mystical handicap and won West Highland Week in CYCA. There is a fleet in France  (mais bien sur!!) and Ireland but the class has never taken off in the UK or elsewhere in the main sailing ports and events. In Norway they seemed to have sold a lot of them, good boats that they are, they wont scare the family in a race with their modest to medium sized rig while they will challenge a racing crew when the big genoa needs trimming in on its top end. In the UK they or the Elan 333 or the x332 should have been crown prince to the outgoing soveriegn Sigma 33 class, but somehow money and taste for one design humility just don't go together in the uk theses days.

So there are a good few lurking around depreciating that one day may seed a bigger fleet than this weeks "big one doon the watter" here in Norway or back in Blighty if they start to fall sub 20k and get picked up willingly by local groups of sailors keen to get out of snot boxes and their ageing smegs and get into something nice to race and cruise.

Anyway, back to the "Faeder'n" as it is affectionately known. I have blogged about it before and how it all happens, and how to sail well in it and so on, so refer several years previously, second week in June time. This year numbers are down but it seems that at some point the whole set up was also trimmed down, with the Melges deciding not to do it anymore as it can take all day to get to Drobak, and the interloping handicap systems of ORCi and IRC being banished from the event now as far as I can see.

In fact this all may make for a more spectacular event, I do expect some NOR Lys splits apart from the standing cruiser vs racer, which would be two classes making up many hundred boats. I would expect there to the R30/36 and R40/45 splits in that current mass, if not further down into three or four starts. A division to only Two starts would be pretty terrifying coming out of the relatively narrow channel at Bygdoy.

NOR LYS is a hybrid system> a bit like Scots and Norwegian law, it is based on statutes which can then be challenged by precedents of performance over time. The j109 went up from a fairly generous 1.27 to a more challenging 1.32 over a few years, but that also reflected the experience with the boat being sailed by some amateur top teams like Blur. NOR LYS has advantages over IRC due to this, althouuh there are still some boats which are dogs to sail to their handicap and others which can more or less win by sailing round the course in their own wind at their own leisure. I beliuve it now uses a VPP programme to help with the initial comparison to scratch boat at 1.00, and after that is open to modifications. Unlike PY then you can be dammed by a fairer system in outset now, and then you can be further dammed by people sailing the boat well.

Faerder'n is a racer-cruisers regatta without a doubt, you need a bit of creature comfort for the 12 to 36 hours it is going to take you and then the "after sail" at Horten which is a party worth going to even as a land lubber! Down the fjord with a head wind and that being against a falling tide it can be bumpy and I dont fancy the low freeboard of a Mumm 30 / 36 or a bare ribs wooden classic scandinavian 'krysser' either.

The spirit of the event is firmly in that of many CCC events rather than ROYC events and although it can take you 36 hours to complete before they call Time gentlemen please, it is not taken with the ardour of the Fastnet. They are familiar, largely sheltered waters with many way points which are as much favourites to all types of sailors here as the Needles, The Cloch or Ardnamurchan are to British sailors.   There is a lot of serious sailing but there is also hot food and good camaraderie under way for 99% of boats.

Now that hull design for family owned racer - crusiers has come to a logical evolutionary slow down, while cruiser-racers get fatter, sprout twin rudders and get more sail area, there is a certain focus on sailing boat on boat despite the lack of OD in numbers. Regrettably all the main secrets of winning the race in terms of strategy have been cut and pasted in the press here, and my own blog not to forget, it actually makes for more intense racing because boats know where they have to go and when they have to get there to avoid the heavy tide or surface blown drift.

The last time I sailed it on the j109 we had a strategy to stay out of the tide and then see if it turned or was worth picking our way through the small islands, while Blur (then in j109 guise) went to Horten and picked her ways meticulously through the islands. We dashed over to Bastoy or just before there anyhows, and then choose to take the bigger and truer wind to be had on the fjord. Our compromise paid because I dare say we were all a lot fresher than the crew of Blur who had been short tacking up the chain of islands all the way, while we chose to go in briefly for a couple of channels when the tide came up, and then dart out for a fully port side transit and rounding of the famous lighthouse, Tristein. We of course then met up, us slightly ahead of Blur!  The ensuing battle towards Horten is for me at least, the stuff of minor legend, with only an over zealous second helm throwing the door open for blur when he tried to roll Norways best sailed 36.7 on the reach near the Tonsberg oil terminal.  We  finished somewhere in the top ten of a fabulous R36 class, kicking the ass of nearly all the bendytub beachballs who had started with us, and finsihing in a resounding 16th place overall for the event. Blur did better, and that is what they deserved!

Indeed there are  many races within the race, in terms of both boat on boat tussels, sailing through slower classes or parked up cheque book racers in their carbon machines which is very gratifying. Then you have a kind of natural set of 'etappes' like a mini tour de france with the pyrenees being Drobaksund and the Alps being the Balerak islands to round the damned lighthouse. The start is the sprint and often it is said that the race is decided by the grey rocks of the Gaaseoyene just where the fjord opens out south of Oslos city limits. This has absolutely NOT been yours truly soggy bottom boy's experience, but I can imagine in the Express class that the leader would be able to sit a loose cover on the fleet and keep their own wind enough to be in the golden zone all day and all night if needs be.

If I remember rightly as the crow flies it is over 67 nautical miles, so with major beating it is a lot longer and any good assymetric contest will add more to that. It ranks along with Round the Island (of Wight that is) and the former glorious Scottish Series overnight from Gourock in terms of miles completed times competitor numbers.  The wee dour Scots are nae into an overnight, while many a Faerder skipper relishes the idea of having the whole night to sneak away from their rivals and get round the bloody rock in front.   Like Scottish Series or the Fastnet, the field tends to thin out , south of Drobak sound usually so there are many hearts in throats as to where you stand and if you have managed to sneak a lead. At night this is amplified of course, as I know to my disappointment in all four Scottish Series O/N races I started, but the addition of GPS tracking bricks has taken much of the guessing out if you are prepared to plug in the laptop in the cabin.

The Faerderen is one race that I will do again, and again but at the moment I dont live in the right place to train up with a team that is going. Indeed reading the from the entrants list right hand column, it appears that the event is a veritable who's who of mid to upper Oslo Fjord with as few from passed the corner from Larvik as make the journey from Sweden. There have been British boats and there are some british ex pat helms, not to mention there must be dozens of crew from Blightly originally or flown in as I have met a few kilted warriors there myself!

So not for me this year, and regrettably neither for me the year a female crew were looking for a male skipper in an Express to helm the boat and probably ease some of the a-hem,  tensions on board.  Next year is a new year and there is a suggestion that the j109 we sailed on before has come out of retirement and may be keen enough by 2015 to take part in the Vikings last stand once again. I think I will look up a boat to travel up to and maybe organise some work around Oslo fjord if I can in order to do some pre race training in the run up. Otherwise, well, the recent 2nd place of the current Melges I sail on and the previous Round Askoy glory were just turn up, the boat is tuned, the sails are good, there is some beer and food around for later, lets get racing!!!!!