X-yachts Gold Cup Day 1
Trip Start
May 27, 2008
1
23
31
Trip End
Aug 27, 2008
Copenhagen,
Zealand,
Denmark
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Today is the first day of the Xyachts Gold Cup in Copenhagen Denmark. Even though it is not considered the first day of competition a reception and kickoff party was to be held in its honor, so we decided to bring the boat over for registration and also to enjoy the party. The day started out not to early and we left Lomma Harbor around 10am in the morning. Mats, Mårten, Staffan and I took the boat across the strait that separates Sweden and Denmark in about 3 hours. We first took the boat to Skovshoved Harbor, because that was where it was first listed where the X35 boats were to moor, but were informed later that it was in fact Tuborg Harbor that we were suppose to moor at, which was a great thing because otherwise we would have to take buses back and forth to go to the race office and fulfill the registration. This was my first time in this particular harbor and boy was it impressive
Competition Tent
. It was newly built and it was just shiny all over. New apartments, new docks, new clubhouse, it was pretty spectacular. And plus it is named after a beer company that had huge bottles of its product flanking the entrance to it. It was quite amusing. Ina met us once we had docked and settled our x35 among the other boats and we unloaded our things and situated the car. I was really excited to park our boat right by the American flag because I had read on the lists online that there was expected to be an American crew competing in the x41 race and I was curious to meet them and see where they were from. They had flags from all the countries that were competing all 20 of them. It was great to see all the different flags on the back of each boat and here all the different languages being spoken. Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, and Danish pretty much blend into one so that wasn't anything new, but I heard Spanish, Italian, and French being spoken as well as I weaved among the boats. Lucky for me English was the official language of the competition so I wasn't left out as far as the ceremonies and other festivities went. After settling in we headed over to the race tent and checked in our boat. We received a bag with goodies and our race number of 84. After that we dropped off those thing back on the boat and headed off to be weighed. There is a max weight of the crew on board and we were trying to be under that as much as possible. We approached the weighing area and it was amusing to watch the people trying to strip down to their underwear to get down in weight
X35s!! A lot of Them
. To my surprise the people ahead of us in line were the American crew. They happened to hear me speaking English and they started talking to me. And I was dumbfounded when they told me they are from Long Beach, CALIFORNIA!! What a small world it is when the only American crew competing in this whole international competition come from your hometown over 10,000 miles away. What are the chances!? I had assumed they would come from the east coast or something, but know they came from the good ol LBC. I spoke with the wife of the skipper and she was laughing because as we were speaking the crew was told that they were 13kg over the limit so they would have to sweat it off and re weigh in the morning. Whodathunkit. Haha. Because we were not a full crew we were not sure about our exact weight, but I weighed in at a nice 48.1kg hopefully giving enough leeway for the guys that were coming tomorrow morning. After the weighing drama we walked around the tent and looked at the various displays. We weren't sure about what to do about food tonight, so Mats suggested we just grab some of the sausages they had at the tent and we ate those most hungrily and waited for the reception an hour later. The reception was pretty sweet and they served us champagne mixed with bols blue curacao to toast the beginning of the competition. I think we all had at least 2 glasses each. Even though we had our very light sausage dinner it was compensated by the light refreshments, that we turned into not so light, by repeated visits to the tables for cheese, fruit, and vegetables. Full and a little tipsy from blue champagne. I slept soundly on the boat anxiously awaiting the race to come.
