ISAF Sailing World Cup Mallorca - Aussies Bundock and Curtis move up

by Rob Kothe on 4 Apr 2014 ISAF Sailing World Cup - Mallorca 2014. Wind aplenty on the Bay of Mallorca today 25-30 knot gusts. Australia's Darren Bundock and Nina Curtis are sailing in their third ever Nacra 17 regatta.

They are just a point off second place, behind France's Billy Besson and Marie Riou and Franck Cammas and Sophie de Turckheim.

Bundock, a dual Olympic silver medalist and Curtis, London 2012 Silver medallist, are at least eight months behind Besson and Cammas in time in the boat and are clearly serious contenders in the class.

This evening Bundy said, 'Nina was badly hurt yesterday. She is quite badly bruised around her elbow and has been getting a lot of physio work on it. She went flying forward and collected the side stay on the boat when we did a big nose dive. It is not stopping her, as soon as the five minute gun goes and the adrenalin kicks in, she is fine.'

'Before that, she is holding her arm and then as soon as the start gun goes, she is away. She did another two races yesterday and did a great job.'

'Today was a bit extreme. Halfway up the first upwind, it really kicked in and by the time we got to the top, everyone was capsizing. We were just in survival mode and not taking any chances with the bearaways and just cruising downwind as cruisy as you could get and that type of thing. Sort of running a lot square and just surfing the waves rather than just hitting it up and pushing it pretty hard and yeah everyone was going swimming around us.'

'Ahead of us in this fleet, Billy Besson is sailing bloody well at the moment. He is sailing very consistently, for us to catch him will be hard.'

'So we are very happy, we are learning a lot. Especially from watching how the other guys are sailing the boat mainly. Just the way they have got the boats set up. Sailing, techniques and set up we have learned a lot already.'

Here is vision from the Nacra 17 fleet.