International Multihull Meeting
21.-24.July 2005 in RIGA LATVIA

MASERATRI – Corsair F 31 R No 209 from 2002 – sailed with two persons from KIEL, Germany via Denmark and Sweden to Latvia and reached after 17 days and 870 miles the capital of LATVIA, the country between ESTLAND and LITUVIA,the baltic states south of Helsinki Finland and west of St. Petersburg Russia.

The last two meetings were in Germany and for this meeting, it should happen in RIGA to demonstrate, that the baltic states belong to EUROPE .

45 Boats, catamarans and trimarans gathered in the well equipped townharbour Andrejosta near the old town of Riga. Only two stations with the tramway and you are in the center of this marvelous reconstructed historic tradetown on the river Daugawa.Everywhere you find traces of ancient buildings, but on the other hand Riga is a modern young, vivid town full of optimistic young people, who are convinced to start in a better future after a lonng period of occupation, first by the germans and then more than fifty years by the russian communists.

Today – in summertime – all hotels are booked out and groups of tourists are guided through
this capital of ART DECO.

The father of the famous russian director Sergey Eisenstein was a wellrecommended arcitect and constructed in some streets all houses with those fascinating facades.It is a pity, that there is no support to save all those treasures.

But we arrived here to meet friends and their boats and crews.

The Latvian Multihull association did a great job.Look at their webside and feel the stimulating atmosspere of this town – high in the north of europe, where summernights are only three to four hours dark and the bright and clear air is like champagne.

Thursday most of the boats arrived from Norway, Finland,Netherlands, Sweden, Germany,Poland and other countries from the baltic sea.

On Friday games, sport and a „come together“ with a buffet and music brought all together.

Saturday – dark clouds covered the first time this sunny meeting – there was a parade in front of the town from 18 boats, which sailed down the river under multicoloured spinakers.

Easy to reach the start position out of the river mouth in tha bay of Riga – the river was calm and the wind in our back.

But outside in the open sea, there were old waves from the north – rolling more than hundred miles against the shore and a strong southwest blowing against them from the countryside.

MASERATRI decided to reef one part – finally weh ad to sail back to Germany more than 800 miles – and it was a good decision. Two boats didn t finish the race, because of the bumpy road, two tore their sails and FLYERN – a tri from Helsinki lost his mast.

First of all – a tri from finland TROU NOIR guided the boats from the beginning til the end,
followed by other trimarans and the cats.

It was an exiting course in this short waves near the coast and it ordered full concentration from the whole crew.

Finally we crossed the finish line, happy and proud and hoped for a smooth ride up the seven miles in the river to our berth.

But RASMUS – the god of wind –decided to blow against us and so most of us tacked up the river another two hours..

A race course of fifteen miles brought us at the end more than sixty miles on the log.

It was a great evening with speeches, prices, buffet, dancing and the decision to meet us again in 2007 near Oslo in Norway.

Safe and dry, well feeded with glas wine in our hand we followed the dia show – made by a photograper from the regatta boat- and were much more proud, that we were part of this race.

On Sunday there was a guided tour by a professional to all the arcitectural treasures of the town and it started a great fare well.

We started back to KIEL Germany and decided to go down the east side via Poland ( we came up via Sweden and Gotland) and needed 19 days back for nearly thousand miles to fix our boat in our homeharbour – visiting Gdansk for one relaxing day.

At the end we all congratulate RIGA to this marvellous meetin and say Thank You for all.

It was an unforgetable trip over six countries and 44 days with nearly twotousand miles over the baltic sea with her short waves in a light trimaran, who likes flat water and good wind.

Autor: Peter Meincke