a great first Eastersee Regatta

During the last weekend of August 2o14, nineteen OK dinghy sailors from the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and France brought their boats to Oosterzee (NED) for the first Eastersee Regatta in history. Dutch enthousiastic OK dinghy sailors organized this event in the northern part of the Netherlands called Fryslan to promote the class in their own land and to have another great international OK dinghy class event next to the spring cup, after becoming a full member of OKDIA again.

Sponsored by the companies Rabobank, Diversion, Pi-groep, leukebootjes.nl and Scaldis Sails, the event took shape and promotion began by creating a website. Soon sailors started to pre-register so the fleet increased as the weekend approached. On Friday evening the first sailors started to arrive at the campsite near the center of the town, right next to the small harbour and the twnty square kilometer lake. All sorts o boats entered. A SOTA dinghy, O’Donnell, Hein, Dutch wooden boats, Henriksen and masts of wood, aluminum and carbon. Erwin Veldman (NED, former World Champion Splash) arrived for his first time sailing an OK, together with his brother Stephan (NED, former European Champion Splash). Together with senior OK sailor Peter van der Schaaf (NED) they had to battle aces Dirk Dame (GER), Ronny Poelman (BEL) and Frank Strelow (GER).

On Saturday morning race-officer Lex Vogelenzang arrived at the event. Soon to find out the NED 652 of Jan Siebe de Vries, who sadly couldn’t race because of work overseas, was the boat he build over thirty years ago in the barn of his family-in-law.

The flags waved with a nice 11 knots that increased during the day to around 14 knots. The Olympic course was set and the first starting signal sounded. Three 45 minute races were scheduled. Racing was thight at the front and back of the fleet. Dirk Dame (GER) won the first race battling with Ronny Poelman (BEL), Stephan Veldman (NED), Peter van der Schaaf (NED) and Frank Strelow (GER). Frank took second and third race to lead the first day with his SOTA OK. Still very close together, the heat was on for day two.

At the back the older boats sailed competitively on this first day. In the wooden rig competition Sybren Hornstra (NED) battled with Bart ter Haar (NED), Rod Andrew (BEL) and his wife Johanna Andrew (BEL), Teus Baars (NED) and Francois Podevyn (FRA) with his nice varnished wooden hull. Rod and Sybren battled for the first wooden rig on the overall leaderboard.

On Saturday evening the BBQ arrived. Lots of talking, getting acquainted, laughs, free beer and looking forward to day two.

Sunday started with breakfast. Warm eggs, Frisian sugarbread and other small bread from the local bakery. The skies that looked so nice when everybody woke up, turned grey when thunderclouds started to roll in. Fortunately the organization tents were big so everybody could enjoy breakfast sitting dry. After the rain, wind was gone… slowly it came back and the knots increased gradually. Lex his wife and his son Sander had arrived. Sander was going to sail the NED 652 his father build more than thirty years ago.

At 10.30 sailing started in 7 knots of wind. four 30 minutes races were scheduled. The Olympic course was situated close to the shore so spectators had a very good view of the racing. It was very nice to see people who (build and) sailed the OK dinghy in the Netherlands in the past showed up to relive their past by visting the event. After the first race wind had increased to 11 knots and building.

Frank started where he left off the first day, taking the fourth race for Ronny and Peter with Rod taking the fourth place with great sailmanship with his, BEL 1, all wooden boat and rig. In race five it was Ronny who took his first win with Sander sailing to a nice seventh place in the NED 652. Then Dirk took the sixth race for Ronny and Peter, while Frank sailing his worth race ending up only fourth. The seventh race he showed he was fastest in this regatta taking his fourth win in seven races with Ronny taking second and Stephan taking third. Erwin sailed a good second day with two six and two eight places. He enjoyed the OK dinghy and together with his brother Stephan they will be back for the podium next year !

Philippe Cowez (BEL), Joost Rommelaere (BEL), Gem Brekeveld (NED) and Harm de Vries (NED) sailed in the mid fleet, doing some nice battling. Unfortunatley Sybren could only sail on day one, so Rod was way In front on the wooden rig leaderboard. Great to see these wooden and aged OK dinghies giving competition on the water.

Johannes van der Pal from local authority was there to hand over the prizes. There were three special prizes. Johanna Andrew (BEL) received prize for first female. Husband Rod Andrew received prize for first wooden rig. Local sailor Harm de Vries received prize for being the first boat build prior to 1980.

Ronny Poelman (BEL) took third place overall, just before Dutchman Peter van der Schaaf. Dirk Dame (GER) took second and Frank Strelow became the first Easterseeregatta champion. Besides the winners trophy he received an exchange trophy, so the organization encouraged him to return in 2o15 to defend his title. Frank thanked the event organizers. The organization thanked the sponsors, volunteers and sailors and asked them to spread the word about this event. We hope to see more sailors in Oosterzee in 2o15 !!!



--> picasa pictures day one (Carla de Brouwer)

--> picasa pictures day two (Carla de Brouwer)



No
Name
Pnts
R1
R2
R3
R4
R5
R6
R7
1DEN
1423
Frank Strelow
9
2
1
1
1
3
4
1
2GER
750
Dirk Dame
14
1
3
2
5
2
1
5
3BEL
220
Ronny Poelman
14
4
5
3
2
1
2
2
4NED
664
Peter van der Schaaf
19
3
2
4
3
15
3
4
5NED
663
Stephan Veldman
26
5
4
5
6
4
5
3
6BEL
203
Joost Rommelaere
38
7
6
6
7
5
8
7
7BEL
1
Rod Andrew
44
8
7
10
4
8
7
dnf
8NED
555
Harm de Vries
53
6
9
8
10
9
11
dnf
9NED
539
Erwin Veldman
56
dns
dns
7
8
6
6
8
10BEL
221
Philippe Cowez
56
9
10
9
9
10
9
dnf
11FRA
1053
Francois Podevyn
68
14
12
13
11
13
10
9
12NED
647
Germ Brekeveld
78
15
13
12
14
12
12
dnf
13NED500Albert de Brouwer
79
11
11
15
15
11
16
dnf
14BEL29Johanna Andrew-Becker
80
12
14
14
13
14
13
dnf
15NED652Sander Vogelenzang
81
dns
dns
dns
12
7
14
6
16NED258Teus Baars
90
16
16
16
17
17
15
10
17NED336Sybren Hornstra
92
10
8
11
dns
dns
dns
dns
18NED229Bart ter Haar
94
13
15
17
16
16
17
dnf
19NED507Wietze Huitema
123
dns
dns
dns
18
dns
dns
dns