THE ICE IS FINALLY MELTING IN FINLAND

From Tomi Hakola In Finland - Sailing season starting within 2 weeks in Finland although there's still approximately a 10-15 centimeter thick ice cover on the sea outside the city of Helsinki. Luckily the night air temperatures have been for the past week above 0 degrees. During the daytime temperatures climb to approximately 8 degrees. This means that the snow and ice cover are melting "in eyes". Usually the Gulf of Finland gets it´s permanent ice cover around New Year and melts away between mid April and the beginning of May. Most of the skiing resorts closed for this season last weekend. At the same time some of the golf ranges and courses opened. So basically we have 6 months of skiing and 6 months of sailing. What´s good to remember, we have a population of 5.3 million, no Alps but still a Olympic Gold in Sailing, Freestyle skiing, Ski Jumping, Cross country skiing and World Champions in Sailing, Freestyle skiing, Alpine, Ski jumping and cross country! Weird country...

The Melges 24 season starts off in Naantali, the south western part of Finland, on the 14th and 15th of May. Only one week after the this the boats and crews travel 170 kilometers to Helsinki for the second ranking event. The first two events have been usually sailed in light and moderate winds. Hope it will be like that also this year because most of us come with only a couple of hours of training:-)

By the way - if you didn´t know Team Suunto sold their "legendary" winning boat FIN-236 to young Finnish upcoming stars. Don´t worry Kenneth, Henrik, Jolle and Jari haven´t retired! They rented FIN-476(ex-Chiquita) for this season and will be searching probably for a new boat for season 2006. Kenneth, like last year, is also focused in trimaran sailing - visit www.nokiaoopscup.com. Kenneth & co have a new and faster boat in sight.

Click to www.melges24.fi to read / see more of the thrills and spills from the first two events + much more.