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 was sailed from Belfast to Ålesund. Among those taking part was the outright winner of the race two years ago, 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 more than 40 metres long. 15 sailing ships took part in this class, La Grace among them.

As early as Saturday, after the inspection of her rescue and safety equipment at the captains' briefing in Belfast, La Grace received an award for the best-prepared ship in the race, which is a great honour given the strictness of the race committee.

The race started on Monday 6 July 2015 at 12:00 UTC. In the strong wind, in which she reached up to 10 knots under full sail, La Grace immediately settled into first place in the provisional standings on corrected time and kept extending her lead.

Because the forecasters were predicting 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. All the sailing ships in the lower classes took the same route; only the ten largest vessels 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, however, her captain made a tactical mistake: he came too close to the Norwegian coast, got into an area of light variable winds, and it took him another day to cross the finish line. The Polish two-master Fryderyk Chopin, which had stayed further offshore, was thus able on Saturday afternoon to sail undisturbed to first place in class A and in the overall standings.

La Grace took advantage of the Norwegian ship's slip as well and, in the stronger winds off the Shetland Islands, moved up to 2nd place in class A, which she held until Sunday afternoon. Then she too sailed into a calm 30 nautical miles from the finish, stood almost still for several hours and lost the silver medal. Over the whole night into Monday she managed only a few miles, and only the morning wind helped her at last to cross the finish line on 13 July 2015 at 4:58 UTC, after 668 nautical miles, 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.