Old Friends
Gram-Hansen and mates were so active on the Swedish Match Tour this year that they’re the only crew besides Peter Gilmour’s Pizza-La team to have competed in all nine Tour events this year. And their 1-2 in Denmark and Japan is good enough to tie them with their Kiwi-born skipper for second on the Tour’s leaderboard at the halfway point of the sixth season.
“Our goal is to finish 1-2, however it plays out,” Gram-Hansen said wryly.
But Kamp’s disappointment at losing the Nippon Cup 3-0 to Ed Baird is indicative of the expectations they’ve put on themselves after a successful summer. “We won every start and led in every race and got to chose where to go, but made the wrong decisions. It’s disappointing to lose when you’re leading,” said Kamp.
The four Danes have friendships that go back many years. Gram-Hansen says that Arnhild, the bowman, was the first to join the team by being in the right place at the right time, namely dockside when Gram-Hansen needed a crewman. Kamp and Kostner grew up racing Optimist dinghies against each other, but Kamp was last to join the team, in 2001. They all share a love of match-racing.
“If you want to race dinghies and other keelboats you need to spend a lot of time tuning the boat up, getting the right sails and mast,” said Kostner, 26, the mainsail trimmer. “You need to spend a lot of time on secondary things, not just racing. So the good thing about match-racing is that it’s full on and you do a lot of racing and it’s very competitive. You can see if you’ve made a mistake.”
When they’re at home Gram-Hansen works on securing sponsorship for the team. Arnhild, 27, studies marine geology and Kostner molecular biology. Kostner says his studies are a welcome break from the routine. “It’s nice to have something different to come home to, but the time away has affected my studies by about one and a half years.”
Kamp has put his studies aside and just works out, having committed himself to the racing lifestyle. “It’s been a busy summer for me. I’ve done a lot of Farr 40 sailing as well,” Kamp said. “I sat down last winter and said let’s go full throttle and see how far this can carry me.”
The Danes say that sailing with Coutts has mostly shown them how to be more professional, more than any trick of sailing. “I think we’re sailing the boat pretty much the way his old guys were sailing it, but he’s so good with the details, so I’ve learned a lot from that,” said Kamp. “I’ve learned about staying one or two steps ahead all the time. He’s always searching for perfection. I think you can learn a lot from that, being focused when you go out and just always working hard. As soon as you sheet on, it’s race on, use the time effectively. I think we can learn a lot from that professional attitude. It’s been good.”
“They do things different, they’re a bit more physical moving around,” said Coutts.
Despite his continued success on the Swedish Match Tour – Coutts’ win in Bermuda was his fifth on the Swedish Match Tour in nine career starts – he’s not satisfied with the way he’s sailed this year. Coutts noted that he’s sailed about 60 days this year, whereas at the height of a Cup campaign he’s sailing more than 200 days.
“I enjoy sailing with them,” Coutts said of the Danes after winning in Bermuda. “We’ve talked about doing some practicing early next year. We did enough this week to win, but I would like to get back to a high level of competition.”
With Baird streaking to a 20-point lead at the Tour’s mid-point, both the Gram-Hansen Racing and Coutts Racing teams have a lot of work ahead of them to attempt the 1-2 finish. But with the Vikings in the mix, it’ll be a fantastic show to watch.
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