Issue date
Strong winds and some logs on the race course complicated the second day of racing in Barcelona.
Kiwis Gemma Jones and Jason Saunders have improved after day two of the 2015 Nacra 17 European Championships. They’ve climbed to 16th after placing 11th, 25th and 8th in today’s racing.
Olivia Mackay and Micah Wilkinson from New Zealand’s Aon Fast Track Squad are lying 20th – their best result today was a 6th place.
British Ben Saxton and Nicola Groves are still leading the overall of the Nacra 17 European Championship, which takes place in Barcelona (Spain) until next Saturday, but are now feeling the pressure from Australians Darren Bundock and Nina Curtis. The second day of racing in this event, based on the innovative Barcelona International Sailing Center, has been exciting and spectacular with strong winds and waves that caused several capsizes and damaged equipment. Some floating logs have also required the maximum concentration by the 84 athletes who have gathered in this championship.
The second day of the championship in Barcelona saw wind speeds that went from 12 to 17 knots from the NE and rather big waves. The fleet of 42 boats from 23 nations completed three races, which now, with a total of six races overall, allows applying the first discard, where the teams can discard their worst result.
Saxton and Groves are still at the top of the leading board. However, after scoring a sixth, fifth and twelfth, they have lost the six-point cushion they had yesterday. In second place and tied up on points with the leaders, there are Australians Darren Bundock and Nina Curtis, who finished second, third and seventh today, and are now in front of Spaniards Fernando Echavarri and Tara Pacheco, who have fallen down to fourth place.
The French team of Franck Cammas and Sophie de Turckheim complete the provisional podium. After discarding a twenty sixth place from the first day and finishing today eighth, twelfth and second – after being overtaken in the last downwind leg by the Italians Bissaro and Sicouri, the French have climbed five places in the overall and are now third, six points ahead of the Spaniards.
Echavarri and Pacheco have been one of the teams affected by the logs on the race course. "In the second race we were ahead -explained the Tornado’s Olympic champion in Beijing- and eleven boats overtook us because we were stuck with a log. Now we have to check that the daggerboard is not damaged."
Half the fleet will have to check this evening their daggerboard profiles and rudder blades because of the logs. As it happened to the Danes Allan Norregaard and Annette Viborg, who after finishing third in the first race had to lower their performance in the next two: "It wasn’t a good day. We had some damages because of the logs, but we will have the boat fixed for tomorrow". The Barcelona’s Nacra 17 Europeans is the first of the three scoring competitions to select the Danish representative for the Olympic Games in Rio, so Norregaard and Viborg, now seventh overall, go for gold: "The feelings are good, but it won’t be easy since both Annette Viborg and I, as well as Lin Ea Cenholt and Christian Peter Lübeck have options".
Italians Vittorio Bissaro and Silvia Sicouri also had the same problems, although the skipper wanted to highlight the fun part of it: "Like everyone else, we had the problem of the logs. We had to be very careful in the water to see them. Because of the logs four or five boats capsized. But it was fun at the same time". The Italian team scored a first in the final race of the day, which allowed them to climb on the leader board and are now standing on ninth place.
Another crew who had the good feelings of winning a race were Canadians Luke Ramsay and Nikole Girke, who claimed the victory of the first race of the day. But on the second one they broke the rudder. They lost a lot of ground and were not able to repair it later, therefore they couldn’t sail the third race. Ramsay and Girke will also have to stop in the pit box this evening.
Tomorrow, Wednesday the 30th, will be the third day of the six that make the European Championship. The forecast announces strong winds, so the Olympic sailing show will offer pure adrenaline once again.
