One Design report

by Sam Haines on 16 Oct 2016 The Etchells Worlds are done and dusted for another year with the regatta being held in Cowes on the Isle of Wight and sailed on the Solent.

As always with the Etchells there was a very large depth of talent with many Olympic, world and National champions not to mention offshore legends, competing in what a lot of the regular competitors suggested was one of deepest fleets that the Etchells have seen in many years.

From my point of view having sailed in the regatta with Chris Hampton and Mark Andrews on Team Tango was that you get back what you put in. and I feel that it was the preparation that set us in a good spot to hit the ground running to win the first race of the regatta definitely showed this.

We did the Gurtrude Cup about a month prior to the Europeans and the Worlds. When we got back to Cowes it was all very familiar and you already had a good understanding of the venue.

Then we had some good days of training working on technique and sometime testing our speed with other teams and working on settings in all conditions as you never know what the Solent will throw at you.

One of the biggest lesson was that you need to have your settings right for the venue, documented and believe in them. What I am saying here is that you need to know what your next rig change is and make sure you do it. I am sure that we can all put our hand up of being guilty of staying with the status quo “she’ll be fine”. In the Etchells fleet you have to have all of these things going for you.

It was an awesome result for John Bertrand (JB) and crew of Benny Lamb and Paul Blowers not only winning the World Championship but finishing the regatta with a win on the last day to show us all that JB still has what it takes.

It was also a very positive regatta for the Australian Etchells and in particular the Melbourne fleet with JB winning, Noel (Nitro) Drenan third and Chris Hampton coming in sixth and many other Aussie teams having a good old bat against the world class fleet.

North sails supplied sails to 19 of the top 20 boats. For details on which designs were used and proved successful please contact your local fleet representative.

I am looking forward to slipping back into the boat for the NSW state championships next month and then the Australian championships in January both offshore out of RPAYC.

For more information visit RPAYC website.