Melges 24 German Open 2022 at Lake Brombachsee

August 8, 2022 - Lake Brombachsee, Germany - For the second time, lake Brombachsee was the venue of the Melges 24 German Open with the first one held in 2020. This year the event was hosted by Yachtclub Nürnberg (YCN) on August 6-7, 2022.

Four days before the first preparation signal, the organizing committee was looking forward to meeting 9 Melges 24, but due to short term crew difficulties, only 6 boats were able to compete.

Though it was nice to see, that new crews, never competing before in a Melges24 regatta, made their debut on GER 653 with Benjamin Off at the helm and his crew and GER 640 with Susanne Thoma at the helm and her all ladies crew.  We looking forward to seeing both crews on the race courses on a regular basis.

On Saturday, August 6 the Melges 24 fleet enjoyed sunny and warm weather with tricky winds (northern winds are not the best at this lake).  Therefore the race committee invited the fleet to two races only and an extensive bathing session.

On Sunday morning the race committee, under the lead of „Diddy“ alias Thomas Dietrich, a veteran at lake Brombachsee, urged the fleet to an early first warning signal at 9:30am. But this payed off excellently. Lake Brombachsee  showed its best wind conditions: winds with  8 – 13 kn from the east. So the Melges 24 fleet could enjoy four exciting races where positioning at the starting line, the best tactics and the right time tack or jibe determined the leaderboard of the races.

After 6 races the results were clear:

1st Place:
GER 327 „Ballyhoo Reloaded“ with Martin Thiermann at the helm with a score of 6 overall:
R1: 2; R2: 1; R3: 1; R4:(3); R5: 1; R6: 1

2nd place:
GER 688 „Seven Seas“ with Jörg Tillmanns at the helm with a score of 12 overall:
R1: 3, R2: 3, R3: 2; R4: 1; R5: 3; R6:(4)

3rd place:
GER 326 „Bloodhound“ with Jo Schwarz at the helm with a score of 12 overall.
R1:(5); R2: 2; R3: 3; R4: 2; R5: 2; R6: 3

Full results

Photogallery

All participants were pleased with the conditions and the facilities of hosting Yacht-Club Nürnberg and enjoyed especially the Saturday evening event with local food (Schäufele with Klos und Weisskraut) and local beer.

At the prize-giving ceremony Melges 24 vice president Maximilian Thiermann congratulated the race committee for the excellent event and the jury for a quite weekend, since there were no jury decisions necessary. Maximilian concluded: “We at lake Brombachsee had a blast hosting this regatta and hope for future events like this. Preferably with more competing boats.”

Now, the German Melges 24 fleet is heading towards the Oktoberfestpreis at Lake Starnberg (17-18.9.22) and the Europeans at Genova end of October.