Monday, April 6, 2015

The Merry Finnster

I noticed that Finn videos were popular in the bloggosphere a couple of months ago. Being somewhat late in following trends, I offer up one of my favorite Finn videos, this of Olympic sailing's free spirit, Estonian Deniss Karpak. Sailing in Lake Garda, on a day that appears to be solely devoted to training on downwind technique (lucky dogs those Olympians, to spend the day planing to and fro), our hero pauses to pick some flowers to decorate his centerboard before resuming the workout.


Daybreak: Garda Adventures from Deniss Karpak on Vimeo.

6 comments:

Alden Smith said...

I love this video. I used to sail an Ok dinghy - not quite as big as a Finn, but big enough in a big wind.

I have watched a few of these hard out downwind videos of Oks and Finns - Great! aren't they!!

Tweezerman said...

Alden,

The OK died out in the U.S when the Laser came along. Never did revive. I got to sail one in light air so I don't have much of a benchmark. The OK class is going great guns in Europe and Australia/New Zealand at the moment.

Dieharddinghysailor said...

I'm also an OK fan, having owned 2 of them - am going to have a look at an original 1960 OK in Seattle at the weekend.....am sorely tempted to add to my growing fleet, but my wife is beginning to question my sanity....!

Mike

Tweezerman said...

Mike,

The West Coast OK sailors were the other best singlehanders (besides the Finn) before the Laser showed up. Steve Toschi, Rick Grajirena, Brian Thomas, Mark Schmidt -- I met most of them at CORK one year. They would all have been Laser Olympic contenders in the modern era -- but, back then, they were laid back West Coast dudes who were extremely good dinghy racers.

Anonymous said...

Does sailing a Finn really cause seasickness, or is it just this video?

Wavedancer

Tweezerman said...

With the Finns you spell kinetics with a capital "K". In planing breeze the green light comes on; pumping, rocking, there are no limits. Hence you see a lot of gunwhale to gunwhale rolling in the Finn class. It may make the viewer seasick but with the skipper, they are working too hard to notice.