A-Cat Worlds - Ashby and Heemskerk joint leaders after Day 1

by Sail-World.com NZL on 8 Sep 2015 Emirates Team NZ skipper and seven times World A-Class Catamaran Champion, Glenn Ashby is the joint series leader along with Misha Heemskerk (NED) after the first day of racing in Punta Ala.

Two races were sailed by the 154 boat fleet, which were split into two fleets for the Qualifying Cat Sailing News website reports:
Light winds on this first regatta with young Polish raising star Marcin Badzio dominating at the second upwind leg, which saw a little more breeze as it was trap conditions at that time, not on the downwind leg though.... for mortals I mean.

Manolo Calavia was behind Badzio and both were in control of Ashby who was gaining speed after being little bit behind on the calm first part of the race. But Glenn wasn´t going to let go a bullet just like that, and he literally put pedal to the metal while approaching the top mark.

Is great to see live how Ashby and Mischa have learned to mantain speed at the mark, they go for a reaching angle to keep momentum and they are off the foils in a super smooth way.

Badzio & Calavia needed to flat down the A once they reached the mark, and both went weight forward for a standard no trap calm wind floating downwind mode.
But the key is that they had the same or even more speed in the final stretch of the upwind leg than Ashby, so it was more a of a practiced technique & settings advantage (together with Glenn's talent, DNA foils & new Rig of course...) for Ashby going berserk passing them like they were anchored to the beautiful Punta Ala bay sea (bottom).

Glenn Ashby A-Class Catamaran Boat Walk Around from Punta Ala Trail Center on Vimeo.

Once flying Glenn seemed to be reaching nowhere to maintain his airborne stance, visually he was going up past offset mark position, but we knew once gybing it would be game over for the previous leaders.

On the second race it was full trap upwind and excellent foiling breeze for the top guys.
I saw Mischa's race and he left Jason & Jacek way behind at the end (But both did a great job and kept NED007 at good distance till the second downwind gate).

For the full report click here

All in all, the two leaders (2 bullets each) are playing another sport. Check full results at http://www.aclassworlds2015.it/overall-results.html

For more images of the regatta click here