A rainy send-off, but with a full sailing programme once again: Travemünde Week delivered once more on the tenth day of racing. Nineteen races were on the programme for the eight classes, which celebrated the conclusion of the event on Sunday. And all the races were completed swiftly, so that by early afternoon the competitors could begin making their way to the cranes and slipways to ensure they were fresh in time for the prize-giving ceremony.
Over the course of the week, 274 races were sailed across the 26 competitions, and athletes from seven nations took places on the top step of the podium. Alongside the Germans and the British, who each secured ten victories, these were Italy, Spain, Sweden, Australia and Canada.
The final prize-giving ceremonies for the TW finale were once again characterised by British dominance in the RS classes. Among these, victory in the largest TW class, the 2026 RS Feva, also went to England. However, Italy and the host nation were also able to celebrate trophies for their winners.
Dragon:
The overall winners of the North German Dragon Championship – the Hamburg crew led by Benjamin Morgen – had already been confirmed on Saturday. This meant the new champions were able to watch Sunday’s action from the shore in a relaxed manner. On the water, Benjamin Hub (Hamburg) and Tanja Jacobsohn (Lübeck) and their crews were locked in a close battle for the runners-up spot. Before the start, just one point separated the two teams. Afterwards, it was one more. The Hub crew managed to stay right on the heels of Tanja Jacobsohn’s team, thereby securing second place.
Formula 18:
On the final day of racing for the speedy Formula 18 catamarans, things didn’t go quite as smoothly for overall leaders Jesse and Sven Lindstädt (Hamburg) – with a series of 4, 1, 3 – as they had on previous days; however, this did little to affect the father-son duo’s dominance. In the absence of the record-holding winners of Travemünde Week – brothers Helge and Christian Sach, who were unable to attend due to work commitments – the Lindstädt duo won convincingly ahead of the international field. The Finns Mikko and Kirsikka Räisänen are regular guests at Travemünde Week, know the waters well and took second place ahead of the Danes Jan Hedmann Jensen and Penelope Wyon.
Offshore sailing:
Following the long-distance race and the ups and downs at the start of the 2026 regatta season, Seebahn race director Jan Fischer had gathered 27 crews for the medium-distance race in the middle of Lübeck Bay on the second weekend. And despite the rainy weather, it turned out to be another sailing festival. “There was more wind than expected, so we even had to do without the Code Zero – our light, large headsail – and sail with the genoa instead,” reported Lübeck’s Maximilian Gebhard, who sails aboard Gerhard Clausen’s (Hamburg) “Calypso”. The vessel, around 23 metres long with a 30-metre-high mast, is the largest yacht in the fleet. It was correspondingly fast, but after 18 nautical miles at sea, as it approached the finish line in the Trave, it also faced the most gruelling task of manoeuvring its way through the dinghies of the other classes. “That was at least as challenging as the entire course. Tacking in the tightest of spaces, picking up speed again and again,” said Gebhard.
Although the “Calypso” claimed the unofficial title of first yacht to cross the finish line, on a calculated basis it was Jürgen Klinghardt’s (Lübeck) “Patent 4” that took victory in the ORC class, ahead of Johannes Berg’s “Jinx” from Niendorf and solo sailor Patrik Heinrichs on the “Jynx”. In the yardstick classification, Falk Einecke’s (Warnemünde) ‘Geronimo 2.0’ took the lead ahead of Arnd-Tido Ackermann’s (Lübeck) ‘Masovia’.
