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Volvo Ocean Race 2011–2012 Route Map, Gaas­tra Blog wishes Godspeed

All hands on deck for the pend­ing 39,000 nau­ti­cal miles: Today the Volvo Ocean Race 2011–2012, one of the world’s most chal­leng­ing sail­ing events, starts! The con­ti­nen­tal route of the 11th edi­tion will lead from port of Ali­cante via Cape Town, Abu Dhabi, Sanya, Auck­land, around Cape Horn to Ita­jaí, Miami, Lis­bon, Lori­ent and the final des­ti­na­tion Gal­way Ire­land in july 2012. The unique and extremely chal­leng­ing Volvo Ocean Race, will demand high endurance as well as per­fect fore­sighted skills on the inter­na­tional sail­ing teams — each one con­sist­ing of a crew with eleven professionals.

This edi­tion par­tic­i­pate the Abu Dhabi Ocean Rac­ing Team, Team Tele­fon­ica, Groupama Sail­ing Team, Puma Ocean Rac­ing Team, Camper with Emi­rates Team and Team Sanya. ‘The level of com­pe­ti­tion has never been higher’, said Volvo Ocean Race Chief Exec­u­tive Knut Frostad. The teams will race day and night, depend­ing on the dis­tance they will be more than twenty days on the run, expe­ri­enc­ing tem­per­a­tures from –5 to +40 degress Cel­sius. Bless­edly, the teams can bank on cutting-edge sail­ing tech­nolo­gies and the Volvo Open 70s fastest rac­ing yacht in the world, which cov­ered 596 nau­ti­cal miles in 24 hours at the edi­tion 2008-09. Get on ocean deck for the next nine months and keep in mind the Rac­ing Sched­ule and lis­ten to Pod­casts or fol­low the brand-new Volvo Ocean Race 2011-12 Livestream ser­vice in real-time. Gaas­tra Blog and the Offi­cial Gaas­tra Shop with world­wide deliv­ery ser­vice wish God­speed to all teams!  

Audi Med­cup Cas­cais sail­ing regatta, Gaas­tra Sportswear

Today starts the final fifth sail­ing venue within the Audi Med­Cup Cir­cuit 2011 in Barcelona: After this season’s Med­Cup regat­tas in Cas­cais, Mar­seille, Cagliari and Carta­gena, the big Med­Cup Barcelona Tro­phy 2011 final from sep­tem­ber 12 to 17, will attract anew inter­na­tional sail­ing teams, design­ers and tech­ni­cians to the cata­lan metrop­o­lis. Eight teams left will chal­lenge for the final rank­ings in the TP-52 class includ­ing the Ger­man ‘Con­tainer’ of Udo Schütz and Skip­per Markus Wieser, the Span­ish ‘Bribón’ with Gon­zalo Araújo, Ital­ian Audi Azzurra Sail­ing Team of skip­per Guillermo Parada and the ‘Quan­tum Rac­ing’ with Ed Baird (USA) with prob­a­bly the best chances for the Barcelona Tro­phy 2011. This years new fea­ture of the world’s lead­ing regatta cir­cuit Audi Med­Cup, is the intro­duc­tion of the Soto 40 Class, a new one-design 40 footer which is grow­ing rapidly world­wide. Six teams will chal­lenge this week this class as well.

Today start the offi­cial train­ings for the 52Series and from tues­day onwards, the daily start­ing sig­nals for the short races will sound till sat­ur­day! If you’d like to be in the spot of this weeks Audi Med­Cup Cir­cuit 2011 Grande Finale in Barcelona, we refresh­ingly rec­om­mend you the Audi Med­Cup Live Broad­cast­ing 2011 with this years new vir­tual eye 3 D ani­ma­tions. Gaas­tra Blog wishes all teams and vis­i­tors a suc­ces­ful and enter­tain­ing week!

Gaas­tra rec­om­mends the Delta Lloyd Open Dutch Cham­pi­onships, www.gaastraproshop.com

Seven days left and one of the biggest Dutch sail­ing events will take place off the Inter­na­tional Sail­ing Cen­ter Medem­b­lik: The Delta Lloyd Open Dutch Champion-ships 2011 includ­ing the Olympic and Par­a­lympic Classes, will make Medem­b­lik Europes’ sail­ing spot next week­end this year as well!

Orga­nized by the ‘Ned­er­landse Water­sportver­bond (KNWV)’ and the orga­niz­ing author­ity ‘Royal Nether­lands Yacht­ing Union’ in con­junc­tion with the ‘RYC Hol­lan­dia’ and ‘Tre­f­punt Sports and Enter­tain­ment’, this main Dutch sail­ing event is open this year for the J22 and Dart 18 classes, the Laser Stan­dard Laser Radial (Men and Women), 470 (Men and Women), Finn, 49er, 29er XX, RS:X (Men and Women), Star, Sonar(open) and 2.4mR (open).

The weather fore­casts look good for upcom­ing Delta Lloyd Open Dutch Cham­pi­onships and first warn­ing sig­nals will be on fri­day, the 16th sep­tem­ber 2011 at 10 am. You can fol­low the lat­est news and sail­ing videos on the Topzeilen TV of the Water­sportver­bond and the lat­est Gaas­tra Pro Sail­ing Wear as well!

Bel­gian Dragon, www.beldragon.be

The Bel­gian Dragon Asso­ci­a­tion is the umbrella Bel­gian Dragon orga­ni­za­tion and was already founded in 1947. It orga­nizes together with the Royal North Sea yacht club the famous Dragon Gold Cup Ostend with Gaas­tra as the offi­cial cloth­ing sup­plier, that will take place this year from the 2^nd to the 9^th sep­tem­ber 2011. If you want to reg­is­ter for this sail­ing bat­tle in the open waters of the North Sea in front of Ostend in Bel­gium, you can reg­is­ter here directly!Most of the races of the tra­di­tional Bel­gian Dragon Asso­ci­a­tion are held in Ostend or in Nieuw­poort in the tidal seas, where courses and sail­ing con­di­tions are always chal­leng­ing. So per­fect con­di­tions, to make sure of the high-quality sail­ing gear of the Gaas­tra Pro GX-01, GX-02 and GX-03 editions!

Gaas­tra Soft­shell Jacket Men Tune

Gaas­tra Pro Sail­ing Gear

F18 & F16 mul­ti­hulls are prepar­ing for a chal­leng­ing week­end: The first warn­ing sig­nal at The Gaas­tra North Sea Series 2011 will be made on Sat­ur­day, May 28 for the first race of the day. This spe­cial Gaas­tra sail­ing event in the chal­leng­ing North Sea demands great skills and Know-How of cop­ing with sea and its tides. The Gaas­tra North Sea Series is organ­ised by the rich in tra­di­tion Royal Bel­gian Sail­ing Club (RBSC), founded already in 1863 that counts more than 2500 mem­bers with Gaas­tra as the Offi­cial cloth­ing sup­plier. Gaas­tra exclu­sively cre­ated a RBSC Gaas­tra Col­lec­tion for the sec­ond time with High-Quality Gaas­tra RBSC jack­ets and Gaas­tra RBSC Polos, which are avail­able only for the mem­bers of the Royal Bel­gian Sail­ing Club via the RBSC Club Web­site or directly on the club spot. For your next races have in mind as well our new Gaas­tra Pro Sail­ing Gear 2011 arrivals in the Offi­cial Gaas­tra Online Shop. The Gaas­tra North Sea Series 2011 will be held in front of the Beach Club Duin­ber­gen /Knokke-Heist Bel­gium. Gaas­tra wishes all par­tic­i­pants and vis­i­tors a suc­ces­ful and royal week­end!

Shorten sails! For the 27th time the world’s lead­ing event in Olympic sail­ing and the biggest regatta in the Nether­lands will take place this year from May 24th to 29th 2011: The Delta Lloyd Regatta within the ISAF Sail­ing World Cup will take place in Medem­b­lik and is one of the most inno­v­a­tive inter­na­tional regatta for Olympic classes in Europe. Last year, the Delta Lloyd Regatta was the first that strived to broad­cast sail­ing matches with the help of a GPS sys­tem com­bin­ing Live Stream­ing and 3D track­ing and trac­ing. That way the races are vis­i­ble in real­time for peo­ple on the shore. Over 700 boats from more than 50 coun­tries with 1000 par­tic­i­pants will chal­lenge these Olympic Sail­ing days on Ijs­selmeer at his­toric nau­ti­cal Medem­b­lik. The Gaas­tra spon­sored Olympic Sail­ing Team Steven and the recent bronze medal win­ner dur­ing Hyeres World­cup 2011 Pieter-Jan Postma , will heave out at Delta Lloyd Regatta as well and com­pete in Gaas­tra Pro Sail­ing Wear on water and in Gaas­tra Sports­wear on shore. If you like to join in, watch the video we posted for you of the lik­able and ambi­tious „Stevens“ (Steven Krol and Steven Le Fevre) with phys­i­cal trainer Patrick van Balkom in action!

Gaas­tra Pro Sail­ing Gear, Sail­ing Jacket Atlantic

New sail­ing sea­son, new Gaas­tra Pro Sail­ing Gear: Go on board with pro­fes­sional sail­ing jack­ets like the ocean sail­ing jacket Cape Horn, the tech­ni­cal bomber jacket Atlantic or soft­shell jacket Brighton from Gaas­tra. Gaas­tra Pro is the ulti­mate pro­fes­sional line, which uses cutting-edge tech­nol­ogy like strong breath­able Toray, Kevlar, BEMIS and high-quality mate­ri­als like Riri zip­pers to pro­vide you the best com­fort and pro­tec­tion under all pos­si­ble weather con­di­tions. As the founder Douwe Gaas­tra already said in 1897: „You don’t ask the sea any ques­tions, you just dress for the occa­sion“. Gaas­tra Pro is tested by pro­fes­sional crew under extreme rac­ing con­di­tions and by a water col­umn of 10.000 — 20.000 mm as well. This inno­v­a­tive sail­ing wear guar­an­tees opti­mal pro­tec­tion and com­fort for all types of sail­ing: The Pro Col­lec­tion con­sists of the GX-01 series for ocean/offshore sail­ing, GX-02 for coastal sail­ing and Gaas­tra GX-03 for inshore sail­ing. Choose your Gaas­tra Pro favourites from the wide range of sportive and func­tional sail­ing wear includ­ing new arrivals in the Offi­cial Gaas­tra Online Shop for men and women. Where will your sail­ing routes lead you this year?

Gaas­tra Sail­ing Jacket Cape Horn

Gaas­tra Sail­ing Jacket Cowes Women

Gaas­tra Longsleeve Carnac

Gaas­tra T-Shirt Hyeres Sport

Gaastra_ProCollection2010

For tech­ni­cal sail­ing gear Gaas­tra Pro is the best guar­an­tee you can have; water­proof gear devel­oped by pro­fes­sional sailors and tested under rac­ing con­di­tions. The col­lec­tion has been skill­fully put together to with­stand all weather con­di­tions whether it be dur­ing on-shore pur­suits or transat­lantic voy­ages. The GX-01 col­lec­tion includes an out­stand­ing water­proof bench­mark fea­ture equiv­a­lent to a water col­umn of 20,000 mm and has been designed right down to the small­est detail to ensure com­fort and pro­tec­tion under the most extreme sail­ing con­di­tions. With Bemis tapeused as gar­ment fin­ish­ing, Gaas­tra Pro guar­an­tees that wind and water wil l not hin­der your sail­ing performance.

Enter the world of pro­fes­sional sail­ing now!

The gar­ment info short cuts:

• TORAY: Water­proof breath­able fab­ric that offers high per­for­mance while keep­ing water out and allow­ing per­spi­ra­tion to escape.

• BEMIS: A ther­mo­plas­tic adhe­sive film applied to sewn seams to pre­vent water and wind penetration.

• riri zip­pers: These zip­pers will keep you dry and com­fort­able so you can con­cen­trate on your performance.

• IBQ: This highly durable Kevlar rein­forced fab­ric offers com­fort and protection.