The Tall Ships Races 2015

First leg

From 6 to 15 July, the 600-nautical-mile first leg of this year's Tall Ships Races 2015 sail training race was sailed from Belfast to Ålesund, and among the participants was the overall winner of the 2013 edition, the Czech brig La Grace.

The starting field consisted of 36 ships divided into four classes: classes C and D are for modern sailing yachts at least 30 feet long, without and with a spinnaker; class B is made up of ships with traditional rig, and class A is for square-rigged sailing ships and vessels longer than 40 metres. Fifteen sailing ships took part in the race in this class, among them La Grace. As early as Saturday, after the inspection of her life-saving and safety equipment, La Grace received an award at the captains' briefing in Belfast for the best-prepared ship in the race, which, given the strictness of the race committee, is a great honour. The race started on Monday 6 July 2015 at 12:00 UTC and in the strong wind, in which she reached speeds of up to 10 knots under full sail, La Grace immediately settled into first place in the provisional standings on corrected time and kept increasing her lead.

Because the meteorologists were forecasting a north-easterly gale over the Atlantic, her captain Pepa Dvorský chose a route through the calmer sea between the Scottish coast and the Outer Hebrides, which was also used by all the sailing ships in the lower classes; only the ten largest ships headed out into the open ocean.

On Tuesday and Wednesday La Grace slowly beat to windward from the Isle of Skye up to Cape Wrath. The sailing ships out on the Atlantic meanwhile got as far as a third of the way to Iceland before the weather allowed them to return towards Norway. They sailed a much longer distance, but because they were making rapid progress in the strong wind, they managed to overtake the main racing field. On corrected time, however, La Grace was still in first place in the provisional standings.

During the night into Thursday she reached the open sea, where four-metre waves were left over from the storm, and continued towards the Orkney Islands. Over the whole of Thursday she unfortunately moved only 30 miles in a light breeze, dropped to fifth place in the provisional class A standings, and it seemed that nothing would now prevent a win for the Norwegian three-master Sørlandet.

On Friday morning, though, her captain made a tactical mistake, came too close to the Norwegian coast, got into an area of light variable winds, and it took another day before he managed to cross the finish line. The Polish two-master Fryderyk Chopin, which kept further from the coast, thus sailed undisturbed on Saturday afternoon to first place in class A and in the overall standings. La Grace also took advantage of the Norwegian ship's slip and in the stronger winds off the Shetland Islands moved up to 2nd position in class A, which she held until Sunday afternoon. Then she too sailed into a calm 30 nautical miles before the finish, stood almost still for several hours and lost the silver medal because of it. Over the whole night into Monday she managed to cover only a few miles, and only the morning wind helped, so that on 13 July 2015 at 4:58 UTC, after 668 nautical miles, she finally reached the finish in third place in class A and in the overall standings. Six of the fifteen sailing ships that started in class A in Belfast retired from the race.