2007 505 Worlds Day 1 Funky The only chance for a sail for the visitors was yesterday and most groups stayed apart, so I have no form for you. Suffice to say, no one seems to be going slow. I got to chatting with Howie Hamlin last night, he of 14’, 18’ and 505 World Champion fame and asked his view on the competition. His words it’s ‘tough man’. When I suggested to him that perhaps there were no big names, he said, ‘there are plenty of big names, it’s just other sailors don’t know them yet’. He also said that ‘it would be very hard for a Coutts or Cayard to step into the class, because they would get beaten. Only Chris Nicholsan could and that is because he is the most gifted dinghy sailor on the planet’. On the fun side, we had an opening ceremony last night and apart from the crowd putting up with me as MC, it was a great night. South Australia produces some of the Worlds best seafood. In fact it’s so good, the Japanese buy it all and we never get to see any of it. Last night, one of the big fishing companies from the Eyre Peninsula rocked up with a huge stash of prawns (shrimps) and mussels. So I think it would have been a real treat for everyone. We also got a speech from Sir James Hardy. Australia is still part of the British Commonwealth and legally our head of state is still the Queen of England, therefore we have Knights of the realm, though Sir James was one of the last to be knighted. Anyway, he was a World Champion in the 505 in 66 here at B&SYC and he is a great story teller and he had the crowd in fits last night. Get one of your mates to tell the train story. So
far I think everyone has been happy. Today with the
start of the racing, the tears should start.
Day 1 Racing I am far too tired to write this. On our website we were hoping to have mark by mark roundings, but the software wasn’t working. Hopefully tomorrow. Classic day, the wind was a little lighter than we had hoped starting at 5-8kn and building to 12-15kn by the end of the second race. Seems the storms effected the weed as well, either that or the prawn trawlers off the coast have been digging up the bottom, because there were weed bombs everywhere. They caused all sorts of problem. 5oh’s use a gate start as opposed to a line start. Basically it’s like 100 boats lining up in two boat tuning mode. If you are slightly off the pace you are straight into the second row. Starts are critical, In the first race, all the guns came out to play. Howie Hamlin and Fritz Lanzinger won it pretty comfortably. Ian Pinnell and Steve Hunt seemed to lead for the first half of the race but had dropped to fourth by the end. Ebbe Rossen and Olle Wenrup of Sweden were second and Jens Findel and Johannes Tellen of Germany were third. From the Funk Mobiles perspective, we had a shocking start, got lee bowed and had to dig out for clear air. It was a while before we could get in phase. Around the top mark I reckon we were in the mid 20’s. From there we managed to get into phase and make ground uphill. Downwind we are ok until we hit a tight reach, then for some reason we are real slow. Anyway after a glamour third work we managed to get back to 13th by the conclusion of the race. Young Parker Shinn and Gareth Williams had a good first race, being right up there for most of it and dropping their bundle a little toward the end. Good work to the Blue Steel boys. Race 2 Was a little windier than the first. Still block to block on the main occasionally, but dumping sheet mostly, plus there were plenty of shifts to pick. For the Funk Mobile, we decided to go early and hook into the pattern. We got into phase quickly and managed to hit the lead by the first mark. From there we had a ding dong battle with Mike Martin and Jeff Nelson of the USA, swapping the lead several times. They would get us downhill and we would get them uphill. Coming to the bottom mark for the last beat, Mike and Jeff had a kite issue, we scooted past them and worked a little left, they headed right as did Doug Hagan of the USA and Michael Duffield from AUS. The right paid and those two gained the lead. By the end of the work we had hit the front again. Unfortunately, on the last run we lost our outhaul into the boom. We dropped a place to Doug and Mike whilst I tried to fix it. We had to give it up and then Mike and Jeff came over the top on the reach from the bottom mark to the finish with our baggy main. In the end it was Doug and Michael, Mike and Jeff, then Helmut and me. The standard is defiantly high, from my perspective, it’s going to be hard to replicate today’s result. Both Howie and Fritz, Mike and Jeff and Jens and Johannes look formidable and the Nicholsans haven’t shown up yet. Sorry the report wasn’t more fun, but I am just too tired to do anymore. Stay happy, Jfunk |