Twins, POL 38
à jour au: 2016
1987 plan Grodzicki, Conrad 777 built in Gdynia, Poland

 

1987 Fin aout, QUARTER TON CUP, Cork: ??e/20, ZALESKI
Pictures from Dutch QT Class Facebook 2016,

1988 QUARTER TON CUP, Travemunde, Allemagne: 15 - 18 - 19 - 15 - 12 = 17e/19, KRYZEWSKI

1995 4 September, QUARTER TON CUP, Gdansk: 17 - 16 - 16 - 9 - 10 - 15 = 14e/20, Piotr CHYLARECKI

2016 Boat still racing in Poland, Picture and comments from Dutch QT Class Facebook,

Chris and Waldek Zaleski: "For the 1987 Worlds in Ireland we build the boat 'Twins' based on a new design. We also build our own sails, which were the first Kevlar sails build in Poland. Those were the different times (Communistic Poland behind the Iron Curtain) and to organize and make the trip to Ireland was the success in itself and participation was kind of a reward for the efforts. We have a very nice memories of this event and the hospitality of Irish sailors..."
"...The Commodore of the yacht club belonging to Maritime Academy gave us a green light to build a new Quarter Tonner. Money was scarce but we had the resource of time. We were building the boat during the day and we started to design and build sails during evenings . We read of a new amazing fabric on the market called "Kevlar". There was no place in eastern block countries to buy this material. Collectively with the crew we saved enough hard currency to buy a roll of Kevlar from Dimension, Denmark and had it brought by a Polish vessel to help defray shipping cost. It was enough cloth for just the leech of the main and genoa. This is how the first Kevlar sails were produced in a communistic country..."
"... Finally we made it to Crosshaven, Ireland with numerous and now comical challenges on our way. Our limited financial resources did not allow us to use the crane in the marina to launch the boat so we decided to use a dinghy launching ramp at the Royal Cork Yacht Club - the host of the Championships. The members of the club were not used to seeing a boat slightly bigger than J/24 launched by hand on the ramp so they came to see what is going on and helped us. Thankful, we invited them to our tents, which were pitched up on the hills behind the club's parking lot (a hotel was  out of question) for a taste of polish beer and vodka. We immediately became popular as we were told that we were the first team from the Eastern Bloc to make it to their country..."
"...When the racing started we realized that our new boat, although well built, was not very competitive as the materials available to us like resin, fiberglass mat, balsa core were inferior to the ones in the Western World. The highlight of the regatta for us came in the long offshore race, some 300 NM with strong breeze reaching 40 kts. were we placed mid fleet (9 out of 21). Unfortunately, the aluminum mast after heavy backstay application stayed permanently bent and we had to take it out of the boat and tried to straighten it between two trees with a somewhat successful result. We were told later that the spar manufacturer in Poland was only able to use aluminum similar to the one the spoons are made off as the high quality material was secured for the military purposes only. In the end, we still managed the best Polish QT finish in any foreign regatta as of that date. Irish hospitality amazed us. Our Irish friends told us that it rains in Ireland only twice a week - once for 4 days and once for 3 days and that proved disastrous for the food we brought. Potatoes, vegetables and bread were all rotten after two weeks and we still had two weeks before we could reach Poland and the only money we had was $300 USD to get home with... "
Seen on ORC Boat Database