470 Worlds, the Hague, Holland - Report from Jason and Paul

by Jason Saunders + Paul Snow-Hansen on 23 Jul 2010
Top young Kiwi 470 crew, Paul Snow-Hansen and Jason Saunders report on the 2010 470 Worlds, which finished earlier this week in the Netherlands:

After a challenging couple of weeks with a wild variety of conditions, the 470 Worlds are over! We managed to improve through the regatta and finished in 15th position. This is a result we are very happy with considering the competition was a lot stronger than last year, and our challenging start to the year with injuries which put us out of action for several months.

After arriving at the Hague we began 10 days of training with the best sailors in the world, the Australians in the moderate and the Portuguese in the extreme light. Fleets of 30 sailed together in races run by our coaches, Nathan Handley and Hamish Wilcox.

We found we had some issues with boat speed in lighter conditions both upwind and downwind, forcing us to change our sail trim, sailing technique and gear to attempt to get up to speed over the 10 days. It was very stressful making such dramatic changes with just days to go before the event - after months of small and refined tuning in New Zealand. But ultimately we went into the event using the right gear, and with much better boat speed than a week earlier.

There was no racing on the first day due to lack of wind, on the second day the regatta got going with light winds and a lot of tide pushing us up over the line on the starts, giving us short upwind and long downwind legs. We managed to use the tide to our advantage. Sailing and growing up in Wakatere BC (Auckland) and Tauranga, which are both notoriously tidal, was to our advantage as our experience showed at the crazy mark-roundings, lay lines and in our general strategy. We managed a day without any drops, which helped us later in the regatta, our places were a 15th, ninth and 16th.

Day two greeted us with more breeze but still a lot of tide, and made for some interesting racing. We had a better day getting a 10th and a sixth and moved up the leader board to 28th. One thing that stood out for us that day was that we had good boat speed with a bit more wind, this enabled us to get out of tough situations by sailing fast to turn an average race into a good one.

At this point in the regatta we had completed 5 of the 6 qualifying races and one more qualifying race was scheduled before we split into gold silver and bronze fleets. We were comfortably in gold fleet, and with a drop in place it meant no matter what happened the next race we were going to make it through.

From here on in, the regatta threw more extreme conditions at us - with the tide often around 2 knots and winds gusting 27 knots and averaging 22 knots. We had many delays, on day four we were sent out in winds gusting 35+.

Day three was one of the weirdest of any regatta I have ever been at! With heavy winds forecasted, the start was initially postponed for an hour – then we were sent out in some wild conditions. We battled to get to the race course, and then sailed a short upwind by which time the breeze was hovering between 25 and up to 40 knots! This was compounded by gigantic waves, which left a lot of the fleet upside down.

I'm not entirely sure what we were thinking, but being kiwis and used to sailing in strong winds, we decided to put up our spinnaker and test the downwind… I think we lasted about 12 or 13 seconds before we ploughed through the back of a wave and wiped out in spectacular fashion! After 10-15 minutes of swimming lessons we got the boat back upright and realised the race committee had decided to send everyone back in! We rather more cautiously made our way back to shore with sails which could have done without that experience and waited for the wind to die.

For the next 7 or so hours we waited on standby while the wind was meant to moderate. Finally at 7 o'clock (at night) we were sent back out to race, in a dying breeze with increasing tide. After a few failed attempts we were finally sent in at 9 o'clock! What this all meant was that the next day we would kick off into gold fleet, where racing became a lot harder.

So day 4 came around with beautiful conditions, 18-22 knots of wind, big waves and we were very excited. In the first race we sailed well and battled to an 11th position. The second race resulted in our best and worst moments of the entire regatta! After a blinding first upwind we lead around the top mark with some of the best heavy wind sailors close behind. Approaching the bottom mark for the first time it all went wrong… a bad drop resulted in us capsizing and losing a lot of ground.

We then sailed really well to catch up to seventh at the top mark but realised that during our capsize we'd lost our spinnaker pole! We lost a lot of positions and finished in 19th. This was pretty hard for us to take, but we did our best to try and move on and concentrate on the next race. Unfortunately we didn't have a great race and finished in 19th again. So, a tough day on the water but there were many positives to take out of it. We had managed to move up on the leader board and were sitting in 21st position overall with the potential to move up further going into the penultimate day.

Day 5 was D-day with everything on the line, we were looking to get some solid results to pull us up. Once again the conditions were good with the wind between 16-23 knots with big waves. We managed to sail really well in the opening two races taking a ninth and a third on a day where some of the worlds best were struggling. The last race result wasn't brilliant - 21st … but as we'd been pretty consistent we could drop this. We rocketed up the leader board and were now in 14th position with one race remaining!

The last day was broken into two parts; the medal race, and the last race for everyone who wasn't in the top 10. As we were in 14th position we hadn't qualified for the medal race and went out in the morning for the last race. We didn't have the best race, we started off quite well but dropped back on the second beat to finish 15th. This meant we slipped to 15th overall but we were still very happy to have achieved a good result.

We've sailed together for two years and for two years we have been inside the top 15 at the World Championships, and looking at the results, everyone in the top ten had been sailing 470s for between 8 and 14 years!. At 19 years of age, we are some of the youngest sailors in the gold fleet – we've learned a lot, we competed with the best for boat speed, enjoyed the incredibly tough racing in an experienced fleet where the competition was even harder than last year, and with more experience we will also begin to compete in all-round performance. Many thanks to our coaches Hamish Wilcox, Nathan Handley and also Mike Drummond.

So now the regatta is over we've packed up our boats and driven to Weymouth for Sail for Gold, the next regatta, which starts on the 9th August. For the next 4-5 days we are going to drive to Paris to check out the sites and have a good break to freshen up. I think we may also be lucky enough to see the finale of the Tour de France, which will be an event to remember!

Thanks to our supporters and sponsors: Tauranga YC, Yachting NZ, SPARC, Adastra, Mackay Boats, Donaghy Rope & Cordage, Sailutions, Harken, Producers Trust, Wakatere BC, Wakatere Sailing Development Trust, Nautilus Foundation, Toni Tio Sails, NZsail.com, SLAM, Langford Optometrists, Hammer Hardware Devonport