Helly Hansen

The world's elite of Olympic sailing will be meeting for the 127 years old Kieler Woche (20-28 June) - a part of the ISAF Sailing World Cup. Kieler Woche has even more to offer: three high class international championships (the X-35 Worlds, the X-41 Europeans and the SAP Europeans of the 505), the debut of the new Olympic women's class Elliott 6m and the virtual Kieler Woche online are the highlights of this year. Around 5,000 sailors from all over the World will attend parts of the event. Helly Hansen is for the 11^th year in a row the official clothing supplier of the Kieler Woche keeping all race officials dry, warm and stylish. Feel free to drop by our Helly Hansen tent at the Olympic Harbour at Schilksee if you are in town.. http://www.kieler-woche.de/

Hannah made it across the Atlantic - solo!
 
Hannah White was the first woman to cross the finish line this morning at 07.52 (EDT) in the 2009 OSTAR race; single handed from UK to Newport, USA. Twenty six year old Hannah, from Lymington, was the fourth skipper over the finish line after 17 days alone in the North Atlantic.

Hannah narrowly missed breaking Mary Falk’s record for 35 foot and under boats. Hannah reports that about one and a half miles from the finish, she had to drop her spinnaker and change course to avoid colliding with a large cargo vessel. She says that this manoeuvre may well have cost her the record in the final stages of the race.

Since Hannah’s first attempt at the OSTAR in 2005, she has been working and sailing with some of the world’s finest single handed sailors and this has paid handsome dividends for her OSTAR 2009 performance.
At Helly Hansen we are really proud to work with such a talented solo sailor as Hannah White, an athlete representing the next generation offshore sailors. As a part of Helly Hansen’s international team Hannah takes actively part in developing performance sailing gear for women’s for the years to come

LOCAL FILMMAKER AND CREW TO CROSS 5,000 MILES
THROUGH THE ARCTIC’S NORTHWEST PASSAGE NEWPORT, RI (MAY 22, 2009)  –  DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER SPRAGUE THEOBALD AND HIS CREW FROM HOLE IN THE WALL PRODUCTIONS ARE DEPARTING RHODE ISLAND FOR THE VOYAGE OF A LIFETIME. THERE WILL BE NO TROPICAL DRINKS SERVED AND NO SUNBATHING ON DECK.  ON THE CONTRARY, ITS GOING TO BE A COLD, DARK AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS TRIP.

READ MORE IN THE PRESS RELEASE;

In one of the closest finishes in the race to date, Ericsson 4 held off the recently resurgent PUMA and Green Dragon teams to win Leg 8 into Marstrand (Sweden), and claim their third consecutive leg win and fifth in the race so far. The victory puts Ericsson 4 in an all but unassailable position on the leaderboard.
"We're very close to winning the race," admitted Ericsson 4 skipper Torben Grael. "But we're not there yet."
His team now holds a 15-point lead with just three scoring opportunities left (for a maximum 20 points) before the finish in St. Petersburg

A couple of weeks ago, Dav, Lorraine Huber (our fellow Kastle rider) and I got to go on this amazing trip to the Lyngen Alps and film with Warren Miller.  We met up in Tromsø city, located 350 kilometers inside the Artic Circle, so we were definitely pretty far north. We got to eat some delicious fish soup and check out town for one day before heading out to Lyngen Lodge the next day, about 3hrs away.

Lyngen Lodge was built about a year ago, located on the spectacular Lyngen Fjord of Northern Norway and is surrounded by magnificent mountains offering unlimited adventure possibilities. Their concept is to combine luxurious accommodation with first class catering and unique guided activities, a concept they definitely live up to!
Owner Graham Austick and lodge manager, Elisabeth Braathen, took very good care of us and fed us more than well. I had an overload of Norwegian dishes I haven’t had in a very long time, especially the fresh fish! One day we even ate the cod Chris got out of the sea only a few hours earlier, amazing! I didn’t really catch any fish, all I did was ruin one of the fishing rods....

We had two successful days during the 5 or 6 full days we had there. Day two at the lodge was supposed to be a day with good weather in the morning and then get cloudy around noon, however, the weather Gods were giving us a full day of awesome light! So we got out there early, got in the boat, a uniquely designed 35ft / 11m cabin RIB boat, which we had a lot of fun with! The cool thing about Lyngen Lodge is their idea of ‘Summit to Sea’, taking the boat out to locations where you hike up the mountains to then ski back down to the boat. Our actual hike was only about 4hrs that day, however with filming and taking pictures we were probably at the summit around 6-7 pm and it took us a couple hours to make our way back. The view was absolutely amazing the whole day and when the sun got closer to sunset, the light was unreal! I had one of my most incredible experiences in the mountains that day for sure! Just check out the pictures!
Special creds to the camera crew; Tom Day, Josh Haskins, Colin Witherill, and Peter Mathis were carrying their heavy gear skinning all over the place without complaining at all! They’re practically machines. ?

I think some of us were actually sort of okay with the fact that the next day turned out to be a weather day as the previous day ended up being about 15 hrs long out there...!
Can’t really complain about a day in the hot tub right in front of the mountains, LOTS of delicious food and snacks, sauna, etc....!

Second day – HELIDAY!
So first off, the fact that we got to get permission for a heli is pretty incredible! It is extremely hard to get one in Norway, as they are very concerned with protecting the environment. However, we got permission to land on certain areas, mainly on this one island, Ulvøya.
Our pilot, Tom, was really cool and flew in the night before. Unfortunately there wasn’t as much snow as we hoped for, so we didn’t get to ski certain areas that we planned on. However, we got some fun skiing in for sure, and we skied along a gnarly edge on Blåtind (name of a peak), which was pretty sick. And again, the light was so amazing all day, especially in the afternoon/evening.

In the end of the week I believe we all felt that we got some good work done even though we only had a few days skiing, we all probably left a couple pounds heavier due to the magnificent food, and it was fun to get to know each other before taking off in all different locations around the world.

Lyngen Lodge was definitely an experience that’ll be remembered for the longest time, I can only hope to get back there one day and ski under the midnight sun!

To check it out more about our trip and Lyngen Lodge here’s some links to their site and our blogs/websites:

Lyngen Lodge - http://www.lyngenlodge.com/
Chris Davenport - http://steepskiing.loopd.com/Members/ChrisDavenport/Blog.aspx
Lorraine Huber - http://www.skilori.com/index.html
Karine Falck-Pedersen - http://www.karinefalckpedersen.com/2009/05/heliskiing.html


Enjoy the summer!
Until next time!

-Karine