Nova Scotia Speedbumps On Road To Paris

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HIGHLIGHTS

A perfect ‘Bay Day’ with 8 to 14 knots of sea breeze in sunny St Margaret’s Bay




Port tack start is the high point of a sensational day for Lambriex & van der Werken in the 49er
Lambriex’s girlfriend, Odile van Aanholt, continues to lead the 49erFX fleet with crew Annette Duetz
A perfect six bullets for Tita & Banti so far in the Nacra 17


49er:
Bart Lambriex & Floris van der Werken (NED) launched into the lead with a sensational scoreline of 2,1,1 on their side of the qualifying draw in today’s three 49er heats. All the Dutch starts were good, but particularly in race 3 when the reigning World Champions risked a port tack start and fired across the front of the blue fleet into the lead.

“Our starts were good which made it very easy for us,” said van der Werken. “Free lanes were very important today and you needed a good start to be able to get a good lane. Bart and I are working on making sure we’re synced with our time and distance judgement and today we were on the same page.”









Almost as good in the other qualifying group, the yellow fleet, were the 2018 World Champions from Croatia, Sime and Miho Fantela. Again, the starts were the key moment to get right, according to Sime. “The committee boat was a bit favoured and we managed to pull out three good starts and keep a clear lane all the way out to the left hand side of the course.”

Keeping your eyes out of the boat was also key, both for spotting changes in the tide and current flows across the course, as well as the presence of speed-sapping weed patches. “There were some areas where you could see two waters fighting each other,” said Sime. “So it was trying to work out what the current was doing there, as well as sailing to avoid the weed. When the boat speed feels a bit off, you can never quite tell if there’s a real speed problem or if it’s a strand of weed on the daggerboard.”

The Fantela brothers’ scores of 2,1,5 in yellow group place them second overall, just two points behind the Dutch leaders as the 65 men’s teams head into the final day of qualifying before the gold/silver fleet split at the end of Friday.
For others in the fleet, the Worlds is an opportunity to reconnect with the 49er after a few years out. The Brazilian team of Dante Bianchi and Thomas Low-Beer have reunited in the boat for a bit of a holiday, with Bianchi taking time away from his duties as a doctor in Brazil while Low-Beer is working for a tech company in New York. “We’re enjoying being back in the boat again,” said Low-Beer, “and when the Worlds were in Nova Scotia, Canada, we thought, why not!”



With the PanAm Games due to take place in Chile, the brothers Benjamin & Exequiel Grez have teamed up again as the sole Chilean representatives in the 49er fleet. “We dropped out of Olympic campaigning for a few years when the politics in Chile went bad, but it’s good to be back,” said Benjamin who campaigned in the lead-up to Rio 2016. “It's always an honour to represent Chile outside the country,” added Exequiel. “We don't have a huge budget, no coaches or anything like that, so we have to do everything ourselves.”

That self-reliance was put fully to the test on day one in the windy race, as Benjamin explained. “On the bearaway our rudder snapped, which is when we realised just how windy it was getting. We had to lower the mainsail and make our own way back to the beach with the jib and what was left of the rudder, and we managed it. Today with a new rudder we sailed pretty well, the speed was coming back and we’re having a good time here,” said Benjamin.
With the 49ers behind schedule on the races, the plan is for four back-to-back races on Friday.


Nacra 17: Tita and Banti score straight six

Nacra 17 - After Ruggero Tita & Caterina Banti (ITA) scored three more bullets in the Nacra 17 fleet today, their rivals continue to scratch their heads about how to close the performance gap. Sinem Kurtbay (FIN) thought she and her crew Akseli Keskinen had sailed a pretty bad day so was pleasantly surprised to find out she had emerged from the three races in third place overall. “It didn’t feel like that,” said Kurtbay. “When we came off the start line in the second row of the first race, the Italians were back with us. The difference is that we couldn’t find a way through to the front. They [Tita & Banti] are so fast it didn’t matter even when they had a slow start.”








Six wins from six races is unheard of in Olympic class competition, yet that is the standard being set by Tita & Banti a year after winning Olympic gold at Tokyo 2020. The Italian team have embraced the new era of full foiling and the young crew Gianluigi Ugolini and Maria Giubilei (ITA) were easily the second best team of the day with scores of 4,2,2 lifting them to second overall and nine points ahead of the Finnish crew.

Last year at the Worlds in Oman, Ugolini & Giubilei finished runner-up to John Gimson & Anna Burnet (GBR) who won back-to-back world titles in 2020 and 2021 as well as Olympic silver in Tokyo. The British crew had an ever-improving day of 6,5,3 to lift them to fifth overall behind the Rio 2016 silver medallists from Australia, Jason Waterhouse & Lisa Darmanin in fourth overall. Behind the front two Italian teams, all the points are very close.


Seabreeze grind in the FX

49er FX - “It’s one of those days you’re full on, all day,” said veteran British FX crew Saskia Tidey, standing on her toes, shaking a bit with goosebumps on her arms, mimicking the flat-out trapezing technique needed in today’s solid 15 to 18-knot sea breeze on St. Margaret’s Bay.

Even though Tidey and her driver Freya Black moved well up the leaderboard into 8th by winning race four, it seemed like a ton of effort after three races to have the top three in the 49er FX remain virtually unchanged.
The fleet wasn’t giving an inch and van Aanholt/Duetz of the Netherlands weren’t flinching, either, with a 3, 2, 5, the last score being their throwout, to stay five points ahead of Bobeck/Netzler of Sweden.







New Zealand’s Aleh/Meech and Maloney/Hobbs joined the British in their climb into the top ten and are lying in fifth and sixth respectively.
“We didn’t have the best start and tacked to port and went right which we thought was the right decision anyway,” said Black about their win. “We came out in front and tried our best to stay ahead.”

Black rose from the 29er and 470 classes. Clark called her after her former skipper Charlotte Dobson retired. That team were sixth at the Tokyo Games and were silver medalists at the 2020 worlds.

Friday will be the last chance to qualify for gold fleet where the cut will be at 25th place.
Canadian FX crew Mariah Millen sits comfortably in qualifying position in 17th with Ali Ten Hove but is not satisfied with today’s performance. “We weren’t really able to go where we wanted to go,” said Millen who was eighth at the European Championship last month. “The sea breeze wasn’t very forgiving, but the best practice is doing it with the top teams in the world so we just keep pushing forward.”



Racing at the World Championship runs from August 31 – September 5, 2022 and is best accessed via the website: https://49er.org/event/2022-world-championship/

Daily tracking, results, photos, highlights, and articles will be available from the website. Additionally, Days 3 through 6 (Sept 2-5) will have live broadcast coverage via the CBC Sports App, youtube.com/49ersailing and fb.com/49ersailing.

Here are the daily links:

2022 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 World Championships, Halifax — Qualifying — Day 3
September 2, 2022 @ 11:00 UTC-3
https://youtu.be/Fh4zFApLpc0 (49er) or https://youtu.be/GqLQIVgIIEY (Nacra17)

2022 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 World Championships, Halifax — Gold Fleets — Day 4
September 3, 2022 @ 11:00 UTC-3
https://youtu.be/PoHeOF0XvI0 (49er) or https://youtu.be/aW78tdhUqfk (Nacra17)

2022 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 World Championships, Halifax — Gold Fleets — Day 5
September 4, 2022 @ 11:00 UTC-3
https://youtu.be/T598V4SwIhQ (49er) or https://youtu.be/Hbvr4L0tRsE (Nacra17)

2022 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 World Championships, Halifax — Gold Fleets — Day 6
September 5, 2022 @ 10:00 UTC-3
https://youtu.be/PolhasjOgU4 (49er) or https://youtu.be/Z4-zTS-B3lE (Nacra17)

2022 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 World Championships, Halifax — Medal Races — Day 6
September 5, 2022 @ 14:00 UTC-3
https://youtu.be/pjJxn2cKZ3E (49er) or https://youtu.be/OVPNdM3XJN8 (Nacra17)

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Nova Scotia kicks up hard for the Olympic skiffs

31.08.2022 by Ben Remocker




Hubbards, Nova Scotia, Canada –

All the pent-up pre-regatta tension was set free on a wild and wavy race track on day one of the 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 World Championships in Nova Scotia, Canada.

HIGHLIGHTS

Multiple nosedives and capsizes in conditions that kicked up to 27 knots with waves of 1.5 metres
First-time race wins at a 49er World Championship for Chris Taylor & Rhos Hawes (GBR) and Erwan Fischer & Cl?ment Pequin
Dutch World Championships chit-chat their way to a dominant opening day in the 49erFX fleet
Good opening day for Finland and Sweden in the Nacra 17 fleet, but no one can touch the Olympic Champions from Italy

49erFX:

St Margarets Bay wasn’t meant to be like this, as local team Georgia & Antonia Lewin (CAN) commented after getting ashore from a challenging and at times wild first day of competition in the 49erFX. “I’m not gonna lie. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen such great conditions with big waves and lots of wind,” said Antonia, the elder of the two sisters. “Today was plenty of fun and I think we’re looking forward to climbing the leaderboard a little bit.”









Georgia, who steers the Canadian skiff, was hoping for a better start to the regatta, as they sit in 18th place overall, on equal points with their fellow Canadians, Ali Ten Hove & Mariah Millen. “I think we’re both a little disappointed but it’s kind of to be expected a with a lack of practice in strong breeze. Their waves were super close together so we did a lot of nosediving today and had a couple of really close calls but managed to keep the mast above water.

Not everyone was so successful, and even for the skiffs that stayed upright it was tricky to avoid piling into the back of rivals who had just pitchpoled. The Spanish squad were looking tidier than most, with the two-time FX World Champion team of Tamara Echegoyen & Paula Barcelo (ESP) sitting in second after three races while Patricia Suarez & Maria Cantero (ESP) are in fourth. “We remembered a few things today,” smiled Echegoyen, the women’s match racing Olympic Champion from London 2012. “In flat water it’s easy for many teams to go fast but Paula and I love to race in the waves. A lot comes down to technique and we learned a lot from the Alonsos [one of the most experienced men’s 49er teams].” Barcelo admitted it got a bit scary towards the end of the three-race session but the trainee doctor still came ashore with a big, beaming smile after such a testing, exhilarating contest on the water.

For straight-line speed, a lot of teams envy the pace of the tall Swedes, Vilma Bobeck & Rebecca Netzler (SWE). “Yes, we have good speed and that’s a nice thing to have,” said Netzler, but they also suffered a capsize. “I asked Wilma to pull a bit more jib on and all of a sudden, I saw myself in the water and she just let go of the tiller instead. So we capsized to windward but we managed to make up some good ground on the final lap with our speed and picking a better layline into the finish when we overtook a bunch of boats.”

Vilma added: “With the capsize, the good thing is we are good at putting the past in the past, so we move on and we focus on what’s important in the next moment.” It’s a skill that’s easier explained than executed, but it’s standing this new team in good stead as they sit in second place overall. Ahead of them is NED 1, the sail number of Odile van Aanholt who won the 2021 World Championship at a light-airs regatta in Oman eight months ago. Recently teamed up with Annette Duetz, the two-time World Champion and Tokyo 2020 Olympic bronze medallist, van Aanholt proved she is no one-trick pony after dominating three breezy races with scores of 2,1,1. “I was a bit surprised,” van Aanholt admitted. “Sometimes I still get a little tear when I have days like this because it’s heavy breeze and there’s just such a nice energy in this team and there’s so much confidence.”

Van Aanholt is nearly always smiling and she was grinning for much of the way around the gnarly race track. “There were moments when I thought I was having a bit too much fun. I was talking about the beautiful scenery and we had this drone following us around so we got a bit distracted. But on the downwind you really have to focus because you don’t want a pitchpole into the waves. And then on the upwind we felt like we had some time to chat and that was nice.”

Time to chat. Probably not in the vocabulary of most sailors on such a big day. But plenty of war stories for everyone to talk about this evening as everyone seeks shelter from the stormy weather which is expected to blow through by the morning for a gentler day on St Margarets Bay.

Written by Andy Rice

49er:







The 49er sailors in this world championships are no strangers to big breeze and solid waves, but only one race was sailed on this first day as the fleet sometimes struggled through the choppy and gusty downwind legs.

“We made it through all of our bearaway’s, it was the gybes that got us,” said Japanese crew Tim Morishima. He explained that the steep chop made it nearly impossible to avoid stuffing the bow in the middle of a turn. In one of the 49er fleets all but about eight boats capsized in the single race of the day.

Erwan Fischer & Clement Pequin of France were first in Blue fleet and British sailors Chris Taylor & Rhos Hawes won the Yellow fleet race.

With the last two Olympic Champions absent from this quadrennium, that leaves double bronze medalists Erik Heil & Thomas Ploessel of Germany as one of the teams to watch this week along with current world champs Bart Lambriex & Florian van der Werken of the Netherlands. Both teams finished outside the top ten today.

Full-Send Up and Down in Nacra 17







There was no hesitation in hoisting the gennaker on the Nacra 17 course today for day one of the World Championships despite 24 knots and four to six-foot waves on St. Margaret’s Bay. “We had to send it for all it’s worth,” said New Zealand Nacra driver Micah Wilkinson about his approach to the day’s racing. “There’s never any backing off.”

Americans Ben Rosenberg & Cali Salinas sailing their first worlds together took a slightly more conservative approach. “We really worked at controlling our speed downwind,” said Ben Rosenberg, an American Nacra 17 driver. He and Salinas are missing their university studies to sail in Nova Scotia.

It was the current Olympic champions Ruggero Tita and Caterina Banti of Italy, however, who demonstrated the “full-send,” foiling upwind and down, and winning all three races. Wilkinson and crew Erica Dawson had a clear view of the Italian’s technique finishing second in the final race and are sitting in fifth overall.
“Now it’s kind of about who’s learning the quickest,” said Wilkinson about the fleet’s progression with the new adjustable rudders that allow the boats to foil in more control upwind and down. The loads on boat and sailors are now higher a result of much greater righting moment, taking its toll on both.

“I feel like everyone’s getting closer except for those Italians at the head of the fleet,” said Wilkinson. “We got close to them last time but in the first races they were just launched. They’ve got so much upwind boat speed.”

The Kiwis have been trying to break a pattern that sees three strong Italian teams consistently sailing in the top five at all the major events. Sinem Kurtbay & Akseli Keskinen of Finland and the Swedish pair of Emil Jarudd & Hanna Jonsson, in second and third respectively, had by all accounts epic days on the water with tidy score lines sandwiching them between the leaders and Italian junior world champions Gianluigi Ugolini and Maria Giubilei.

It’s still early days in this world championship, far too soon to identify any performance patterns but the next two days are likely to dish out more diverse weather as the North Atlantic settles down after this ripping frontal passage moves eastward.

Racing at the World Championship runs from August 31 – September 5, 2022 and is best accessed via the website: https://49er.org/event/2022-world-championship/

Daily tracking, results, photos, highlights, and articles will be available from the website. Additionally, Days 3 through 6 (Sept 2-5) will have live broadcast coverage via the CBC Sports App, youtube.com/49ersailing and fb.com/49ersailing. Note tracking will not be working on day 1 as Canadian Customs has not yet released the trackers.

Written by Chris Museler

Here are the daily links:

2022 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 World Championships, Halifax — Qualifying — Day 3
September 2, 2022 @ 11:00 UTC-3
https://youtu.be/Fh4zFApLpc0 (49er) or https://youtu.be/GqLQIVgIIEY (Nacra17)

2022 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 World Championships, Halifax — Gold Fleets — Day 4
September 3, 2022 @ 11:00 UTC-3
https://youtu.be/PoHeOF0XvI0 (49er) or https://youtu.be/aW78tdhUqfk (Nacra17)

2022 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 World Championships, Halifax — Gold Fleets — Day 5
September 4, 2022 @ 11:00 UTC-3
https://youtu.be/T598V4SwIhQ (49er) or https://youtu.be/Hbvr4L0tRsE (Nacra17)

2022 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 World Championships, Halifax — Gold Fleets — Day 6
September 5, 2022 @ 10:00 UTC-3
https://youtu.be/PolhasjOgU4 (49er) or https://youtu.be/Z4-zTS-B3lE (Nacra17)

2022 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 World Championships, Halifax — Medal Races — Day 6
September 5, 2022 @ 14:00 UTC-3
https://youtu.be/pjJxn2cKZ3E (49er) or https://youtu.be/OVPNdM3XJN8 (Nacra17)