Apr 2013 Issue - the Aberdeen Boat Club

Race Reports29ers Nationals:The start of the raceABC Champions AgainBy Cosmas Grelon, photos by Nick HollisThe 29er National Championshipsthis year saw its largest fleet yet.With an impressive 11 29ers onthe water, the waters were set for achallenging weekend. The ABC enteredthree boats, all coached by dinghy coachRory Godman.Nathan Bradley and I were out to defendour title of Hong Kong National Champions!Nathan and I have a tradition of neverhaving a very good first race. Although itis not intentional, it seems inevitable. Thisregatta was no different, even thoughweather conditions were average for us all.Some 10 seconds after the start gun went,we were upside down, swimming with thefishes, struggling to bring the boat upright.Eventually we got her up and were offagain. Since the wind was rather strong(12 – 15 knots) we were able to catch thepack up quickly. With a few boats capsizingon the way to the top mark we managed tocreep back into third place. By the bottommark we were second, and by the time wereached the next windward mark, we wereback to where we wanted to be; first.After this comeback we were feelingconfident and to our delight, we took allbullets with us, finishing the last race witha comfortable lead. The ABC’s NagisaSakai and Akira Sakai scored well, finishingsecond of the 11 boats. The ABC’s YannD’Argenlieu and Andy Service scoredimpressively, garnering some top threesto finish the first day in third. ABC resultsafter Day 1 were first, second and third.Day 2On the second day of racing, we were in itto win it but the conditions had worsenedovernight so the pressure was still on. Badluck forced Yann D’Argenlieu to miss thefirst two races due to gear breakages.Anything could happen betweenequipment failure, injury or just capsizingduring the race. We adjusted our forestaytension to the stronger conditions andtuned our sails accordingly. With windsgusting up to 25 knots and a fair bit ofswell, the first start involved many boatsnot on the start line, and some, althoughon the start line, inverted.Fortunately for us, we were uprightand shot off the line with speed whenthe gun went. We fought hard againstthe competitors but more so againstthe conditions as they were brutal andpushed our limits further. We took thefirst two bullets of the second day, butas the conditions softened Nagisa andAkira Sakai were hot on our heels. Sohot, in fact, that they beat us in the lasttwo races, always overtaking us on thedownwind and beating us both times by alittle more than a few boat lengths!Nevertheless, since Nathan and I hadaccumulated the fewest amount of pointsoverall we successfully managed to defendour title of National Champions! Nathanand I won the regatta with one race to go,and were pleased with our scorecard overthe weekend. Yann recovered from beingforced to sit out the first two races andearned a top-three result at the end of theday. Gigi Sakai and Akira Sakai had a betterday, scoring two firsts to help them safelyconfirm second place.All in all, the 29er Nationals this yearwere very successful with conditionssuitable to finding the competitors’limits, and then pushing them a little bitfurther. With our next target being the29er Worlds in Denmark in summer,this weekend served as great practice instronger conditions as well as getting usall some larger fleet start practice.However, there is still much roomfor improvement if we want to reachour target at the Worlds, so hopefullythe training with Rory leading up to theWorlds will allow Nathan and me and Gigiand Akira and Yann to all achieve morestrong results for the ABC.Provisional results follow and also can be found onhttp://www.rhkyc.org.hk/upload/Sailing/Classes/Dinghy/2013-29er-Nationals-Provisional-Results-after-Day-2.pdfP.22