Team Childhood take victory in hard-fought Prologue race

The four VO65 yachts taking part in the northern-European Prologue to The Ocean Race Europe crossed the finish line off Stockholm earlier today after a superfast downwind leg from Polish city of Gdynia in the Bay of Gdansk.

Team Childhood took line honours of the 300+ mile leg up through the Baltic Sea to the Swedish capital. Bekking’s Sailing Poland finished second, closely followed by The Austrian Ocean Racing Team in third and Ambersail-2 in fourth place.

The close racing between the four northern-Europe based boats resembled more of a match race and the youngest crew member on Sailing Poland, Kacper Gwozdz, was under no illusions about the competitiveness of the VO65 teams. “The race was very hard; we had a lot of sail changes and the conditions were gusty. We were lucky to hang on to a second place,” commented the 17-year-old shortly after crossing the finish line.

The four northern Europe based teams are all fielding young crews in this warm-up event to The Ocean Race Europe. The co-skipper of Team Childhood, 26-year-old Jelmer van Beek (NED), is one of the nine sailors under 30 onboard the Dutch/Swedish-flagged entry. Van Beek comments: “It’s cool to achieve this first victory with this team. For me, it’s a clear sign that we’re learning quickly. What I like most about this victory is that we have only just started with this young team. That’s promising, I’m really looking forward to the future!”

Once over the line the four boats will make their way to Junibacken, the venue for the future Stockholm Ocean Hub.

The boats will return to racing on Saturday with a series of ProAm races, before starting the final leg of the team-organised Prologue event, a 300-mile towards the Danish coast from the Swedish capital to the South Sweden Waypoint.

Following the Prologue, these four VO65 boats will join the rest of the VO65 fleet and the IMOCA boats in Lorient, France for the start of The Ocean Race Europe at the end of the month.