Marstrand Big Boat Race

Cancelled 2020

Our world is no longer recognizable, more upside down than ever before with new twists and turns to make each day unpredictable.

We at MSS have as many of you been following the COVID-19 situation daily for several weeks now, hoping every day that things will change for the better. Still, unfortunately, so far, it hasn’t, actually more in the opposite direction here in Sweden as in many other countries.

Today we gathered the project group to discuss how we should act with regards to Marstrand Big Boat Race 2020 with three main topics on our agenda:

– What is the latest date to decide to run or not run the regatta?
– If we decide not to run the regatta, can we postpone it?
– Can we run the regatta without social events and only do the sailing?

We concluded that to be able to run the regatta, we need to decide at the latest three weeks from now, and the situation in the world and Sweden will not have changed for the better. So that gave us the answer to our question, and that is to cancel the event already now.

To see if we could postpone the regatta, we did a review of potential dates. We at MSS are running the OK-worlds between 7-15 august. Before this, we are in the middle of the preparation for this big event. After the OK-worlds there is a boat show in Marstrand, so all docking spaces are booked for a week. Then we are in the beginning/middle of September. We believe that at that time, taking days off will be a problem for many of us.

Can we run the regatta without social events? Our biggest concern is the health and safety of everybody, the sailors, the volunteers, and the people of Marstrand. And as you all know, one of the major things with MBBR is the great social arrangements. Cold beer directly when you arrive at the dock, multiple after sails, and a regatta dinner where we can talk about the mistakes or great things that happened on the sailing course during the day. None of this will be possible, which makes it impossible to create the event we want.

So after long and hard discussions, we have taken the extremely sad decision that we have to cancel MBBR for 2020. 

We have now been running this regatta for so many years, and it feels strange to have to make this decision. But we have to realise that we are in the middle of things that are completely out of our control. And that a small virus can have such an enormous impact on the whole world is tough to take in.

We hope that all of you will join us next year 28-30 May when we give this great event a new fresh start.

We hope that you will all take care, both yourselves and others, so stay safe and be considerate to those more vulnerable!

We will start to refund the regatta fee to all of you that have registered as soon as possible.

Best regards,
Marcus Blomberg
Commodore 
MSS