North wind (ship, 1939)
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The yacht Nordwind was built together with her sister ship Ostwind in 1938/1939 for the Navy at the Burmester shipyard in Bremen-Burg . They served the sailing training of naval officers at the naval base Heppenser Groden (north wind) and at the naval school Mürwik (east wind). The two newbuildings replaced the yachts Astra and Orion . The north wind was from Henry Gruber as ocean common Bermuda - Yawl ( Marconi -Yawl) with a length of 86 feet designed. The Nordwind was the first yacht to be completed and therefore took part in the Fastnet Race in 1939 in its first regatta season. She reached the destination Plymouth as First Ship Home (line honors) with a new route record that lasted 24 years until it was undercut by the Gitana IV in 1963.
There are many legends about the yacht Nordwind . The rumor keeps cropping up that she was Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz's private yacht . Nordwind (like her sister ship Ostwind ) was an official ship of the Kriegsmarine, which was stationed in Wilhelmshaven, while Karl Dönitz had sailed there three or four times as the highest ranking naval officer, but never in the function of skipper or owner. The same applies to the sister ship Ostwind , which never belonged to a prominent Nazi party or even Adolf Hitler himself, as some sources suspect. East winds sank off the coast of Florida after World War II .
After the Second World War, the North Wind and East Wind were confiscated by the British and transferred to England. Lord Hugh Astor bought Nordwind and sailed the yacht mainly in the waters of the Solent and the North Sea.
In the late 1970s, the Dutch yacht designer Gerard Dijkstra undertook one of the first classic yacht restoration projects with the Nordwind yacht . The work started at Camper & Nicholsons in England and finished in Holland. Unfortunately, the restoration of the hull was incorrectly carried out, so that a complete refit by the current owner Hans Albrecht in 2001 and 2004 in Spain was necessary. The changes to the interior fittings that Dijkstra had made were also dismantled and Nordwind returned to the original state of construction. Since this last restoration, Nordwind has participated in many regattas for classic yachts. In the 2005 transatlantic race (Transat) she was just beaten by the 94 foot yacht Sumurun with two hours and 34 minutes.
In the past few years, Nordwind has covered many nautical miles under the command of her skipper Alex Veccia. In 2010 Cape Horn was circled and the Chilean fjords in Patagonia sailed, followed by a Pacific crossing to New Zealand , where a refit took place. Immediately afterwards there was another Pacific crossing with a passage of the Panama Canal to start the transatlantic race in 2011 from Newport (USA) to Plymouth with the subsequent participation in the Fastnet Race . In the summer of 2012, Nordwind then sailed on the Northwest Passage from Camden in Maine (USA) to Homer in Alaska .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ classicyachtinfo.com: Yacht portrait Nordwind Retrieved on September 28, 2015
- ↑ website transatlanticrace.org Yacht portrait: Nordwind , accessed on September 28, 2015
- ↑ website transatlanticrace.org Yacht portrait: Nordwind , accessed on September 28, 2015
- ↑ website classicyachtinfo.com Yacht portrait: Nordwind , accessed on September 28, 2015
- ↑ website transatlanticrace.org Yacht portrait: Nordwind , accessed on September 28, 2015
- ↑ Vimeo.com Video from the Pacific crossing of the North Wind under skipper Alex Veccia , accessed on September 28, 2015
- ↑ classicyachtinfo.com: Yacht portrait Nordwind Retrieved on September 28, 2015