Dear Atlantic Challengers,

This summer was very rich and fruitful for Russian crew. We launch gigs in May, and immediately took part in two rowing regattas. Then in June we initiated a 300 miles trips on yachts along north shore of Gulf of Finland. Five yachts crewed by 30 young people from 5 different youth organizations completed the trip to commemorate a World War II. In July we repeat this route on our gigs followed by our traditional Baltic Challenge – training camp and races on Totleben fortress, artificial island 18 miles away from St. Petersburg.
For the September we are looking forward to welcome Finish crew in St.Petersburg for week-end gathering and sailing.

Let us share our experience upon completion of the Baltic Challenge 2005 training camp and contests.

The whole program was designed consisting of two parts: training and preparations and the contest itself.
The contest is using AC events listed and described in AC 2004 manual, but some of the events were modified in order to enable a competition between two boats/crews, experiment new things, make events more interesting and exiting for the crews.

The training part lasted for the first six days, July 30th-August 4th.. During this time experienced team members were teaching new comers how to use the gigs and on later on they were polishing technical skills as a teams.

The special attention was paid to mixing up the crews and roles in a boat so that every crewmember would be capable to act in all the each roles on a gig. Probably the most interesting for the crews was a capsize trial, when one of the crews intentionally cup size the boat with a full sails and recover with a help of another boat crew.

The training was followed by 4 days Baltic Challenge contest (August 5th –9th). The main goal was to demonstrate to the crews AC events and to prepare them for future International AC contests.

During these 4 days we have manage to hold a following events:

• Sailing race – 3 times
• Sails& Oars – 2 times
• 2 miles rowing – 1 time
• Sack Transfer – 2 times
• Navigation contest
• Rope work contest
• Towing race
• Man over board – 2 times
• Monkey fist throwing contest
• Captains gig
• Around-island freestyle race

The scenario for rope work event and was modified to the following:
The crews were split up in a pairs. The coarse on land was set up consisting of 50 meters run, making a knot, 10 meters run, making a knot and so on. After making 4 knots the crew member would pass the baton to his partner like in a relay race and the new crew member would continue to run from one station to another and tie the knots. The crewmember had 1 minute to tie a knot, 2 minute penalty for incorrect knot and 3 minute penalty for refusal to tie up the knot. The knot tying was set up like in a real life situations: hanging over boats side to tie to the anchor, tie up clove hitch around the pole over your head and so on. The over all crew result was consisting of the timed results of each pair going through the course.

Towing race was modified to enable competition between two boats and to add some unexpected challenge taste into it. The start was as regular towing race start. After the start each boat crew should drop their main and fore mast over the side and tow them to the turning line. At the turning line the crew should pick up the masts, set the sails and tow 5 oars behind the boat under sails to the finish.

Monkey fist throwing contest: every crew member ashore would throw the monkey fist. Each distance thrown was added to get total crews result and determine a winning crew.

Around-island freestyle race. This is a Russian know-how race invented in 2003 to speed up crews preparation for leaving up the dock. In previous years the event rules were explained to the crews and the starting signal was given unexpectedly for the crews. Upon the signal the crew should get together, load the boats with masts and sails, leave the dock, round the island under oars or sails upon coxes decision, come to the dock, unload the gig and leave the gig.
This year we have decided to add more juice into the race and the start was given when the boats were moored about 30 meters offshore. During the race the crews were asked to do some additional tasks, round the island and then unload the gigs and put them to the mooring. Even the event was quite complex and energy consuming the crews liked it very much. Until the end of the race it was very difficult to predict which crew is winning and the leading position did change a few times during the race.

The photos reflecting best moments of the Baltic Challenge will be available on our web site shortly www.challenge.org.ru

With warmest wishes from St.Petersburg,
Misha Plekhanov & Zlata Bredova

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