In one of the great classics of north European offshore sailing, a total of 87 entries competed in two ORC International and two ORC Club classes in the 2008 edition of the Eurocard Gotland Runt Race.

This race drew a total of 274 entries from several countries around the Baltic, who sail on courses which vary in length so as to have competitors return to the finish close together after 48 hours of sailing.

The race annually starts and finishes off the island of Sandhamn, the base of the Royal Swedish Yacht Club (KSSS).

Sailing on the 361-mile Charlie course was ORC International Class C and ORC Club Class C. Winners of the ORC Int Class C class was Lars Duvander’s Arcona 400 Banken Bar, who defeated 36 other entries in the class by a margin of less than 5 minutes over Ingvar Hertzman’s IMX 40 Du Soleil II. To put extraordinarily close result in perspective, this is less than 0.2% of the total corrected time!

And in the ORC Club Class C Jesse Aarnio’s Swan 46 Wafi from Finland defeated a smaller class of 9 boats, though by a margin in corrected time of over an hour.

On the shorter 309-mile Delta course, it was another Finnish entry, Hanno Narjus’ custom-designed Prospect of Whitby, that led from near start to finish in the 30-entry ORC International Class D, while Leif Persson’s Jeanneau SF 37 Grand Cru also dominated the smaller 11-entry ORC Club Class D.

When interviewed in Sandhamn waiting for the other boats to come in, Narjus expressed some thoughts about the race. Just before reaching Alma the crew got a bit nervous when the wind became light and changed just when they had hoisted the spinnaker. “We were afraid that our main competitors could have passed, so the racing was hard all the way up until the last minute,” claimed Narjus.

While awaiting corrected time results, Narjus was hopeful to win his class: “We have a very good boat and an experienced crew with a potential to perform. The only problem was that we had not sailed this boat together before.” Turns out his team was good enough, as they beat class runner-up Stormsteg by over 14 minutes.

With generous sponsorship, a large following, and a course area close to the islands of Sweden’s Baltic archipelago, the race has over the years developed some interesting innovations, such as real-time position tracking on Google Earth off the event’s website. Besides position, other information such as the name of the skipper, online actual boat speed, class, average speed, distance to goal and estimated time of arrival are all depicted.