Danish Teams Leading 55th IKC, First StFYC Team in Seventh
The 55th International Knarr Championship (IKC) is underway in Copenhagen, hosted by the Kongelig Dansk Yachtklub (KDY, Royal Danish Yacht Club in English). Jon Perkins of St. Francis Yacht Club (StFYC) is currently the highest placing Bay Area team, sitting in seventh place. This year’s IKC features one of the most crowded start lines in IKC history, with 33 teams competing. It’s also the most one-design an IKC has probably ever been, with all of the boats provided by the Danish teams using identical sails. This is also the first IKC to use “Vakaros” technology on the starting line to electronically call boats over early.
As with longstanding IKC tradition, the Wednesday during the weeklong regatta is a “lay day.” During this off day, sailors can re-evaluate, the out-of-town crowd gets to explore the host city and country, and sailors get to recover from the midweek party.
Going into this year’s lay day, the home teams at the 55th IKC are dominating. The first six teams on the scoresheet are Danish, five-time IKC winner Lars Gottfredsen (Rungsted Sejlklub) leading the way with 21 points from four races. According to the Sailing Instructions for the event, the plan was for six of the scheduled 14 competitive races (there is also a practice race to start the regatta per IKC tradition) to be completed prior to the lay day. The light wind in Copenhagen had other ideas on Tuesday.
After the leading pack of Danish teams Perkins’ boat can be found in the scores. Jon Perkins is sailing with his brother Chris and Larry Swift (all of St. Francis Yacht Club), might not be in the top five, but with 31 points from the first four races, they are only six points off fifth, and only 11 points out of first. After team Perkins, the next San Francisco team is Don Jesberg’s (SFYC) in 14th place, with 60 points. As of now, the highest Norwegian boat is Johan Gustav Hvide’s (Bergens Seilforening) team with 56 points.
According to the SIs, the first drop will come into play after the sixth race, which will shake up the scores. The second drop will come into play after race nine, and the third after race 13.
“There were tons of shifts, and the left side paid off big-time in the first few races,” Tommy Finnegan, the bowman for Mark Dahm’s team Benino (StFYC), tells Latitude. “[Monday] and Sunday it was 12-15 knots …. [The] Vakaros system has been cool to use. It gives you distance to the line, and calls you OCS via GPS, so there’s no hiding from the race committee. Vakaros has made everyone super-cautious on the line. There’s been no U-flag, so that’s been great. There was no racing [on Tuesday]; we were postponed until 1:30 and then we saw AP over Alpha, so I spent the rest of the day at the bar.”