British crews in the chase as Para Worlds reaches halfway stage

by RYA on 26 May 2016 British sailors remain in contention as the Para World Sailing Championships reached the halfway mark in Medemblik, the Netherlands, on Thursday (26 May).

Defending champions John Robertson, Hannah Stodel and Steve Thomas resumed the overall lead in the Sonar class, with Helena Lucas advancing to fourth after a solid day in the 2.4mR fleet, while Alexandra Rickham and Niki Birrell held on to a top three spot in the overall SKUD standings in spite of a disappointing outing on the third day.

After a late start to proceedings due to light wind conditions on the Ijsselmeer, the 2.4mR fleet was the first to get underway once the breeze had built, with Paralympic champion Lucas determined to bounce back after a shaky start to her regatta.

She kicked the day off with a race win in the opening race of the day, with British Sailing Team Podium Potential talents Carol Dugdale and John Brooker also seeing impressive race scores of third and fifth to start their day.

Lucas followed up strongly in the second race, finishing just behind teammate Megan Pascoe to post a third and record the best scores of the day across the one-person fleet.

“Speed was the massive thing today. I had really good speed,” Lucas explained.

“That obviously massively helped because it sort of seemed a bit of a one way track, so it was more of a speed race and if you had good pace it could get you out of a lot of trouble.

“I certainly seemed to have that up the beat – and I had better starts as well!”

With several contenders having an up and down day, and a race discard having taken effect after fifth race of the series, the points margins have tightened. Lucas is currently in fourth overall, five points from the podium spots with four races to go.

“I think it’s been completely thrown wide open, certainly for the first three,” Lucas continued.

“Matt [Bugg] has been really consistent, Damien’s had his first big score on the board, Heiko had a great first race but not so great in the second.

“The door’s wide open but hopefully I’m chipping my way back in and hopefully by the end of the week I’ll have reappeared in the top three without anyone realising!”

Pascoe is currently eighth overall, Dugdale 14th, Brooker 15th and Will Street 16th.

The Sonar fleet were sailing the late shift on a 1600 start, but the delays didn’t seem to impact John Robertson, Hannah Stodel and Steve Thomas who had a solid day on the water and regained the yellow leaders’ jerseys with two days to go.

“It was another typical Medemblik shifty day, lots going on and we managed to not step on many snakes today. We’ve had a four and a one so we’re pretty chuffed with that,” said Stodel.

“Compared to yesterday everything sort of clicked. There was a bit more breeze today so it made life a little bit easier around the race track and it was just working. We stayed in the pressure, stayed on the right side of the shifts most of the time and just hung in.”

The trio overtook four boats on the last lap of the second race to reclaim the overall lead by two points over USA’s Rick Doerr, Hugh Freund and Brad Kendall.

The fleet remains close with five boats all within four points of each other at the top of the table.

“I think today has shown that our fleet is all over the place and one bad race can cost you quite dearly,” Stodel continued.

“We’ll just keeping sailing away, sailing our own race. At the end of the day you could start trying to work it out and trying to think about every single player that’s involved right now but that’s way too complicated. We’re going to keep chugging away as we do in the background.”

Craig Wood, Steve Palmer and Liam Cattermole are in 11th overall.

Alexandra Rickham and Niki Birrell had a day they’d rather forget in the SKUD event, losing ground on the Polish leaders and suffering some kit damage in the process.

The 2012 bronze medallists posted scores of eighth and 11th to sit in overall third place, equal on points with Australia’s Dan Fitzgibbon and Liesel Tesch in second. Poland’s Monika Gibes and Piotr Cichocki have a ten point jump at the top of the leaderboard.

“It was quite a difficult day for myself and Alexandra,” Birrell surmised.

“We got a little unlucky in the first race, we didn’t make the best job of the start and made the race really difficult. Unfortunately we lost a few places down the last run which made it tricky.

“In the second race we were doing really well – we were leading at the bottom mark and had the Polish in a bit of trouble so it was all looking fine. Then unfortunately the kite halyard went under the pole and the kite ripped in two. The kite was under the boat all the way up the second beat and we had no kite down the last run. That cost us a lot of points.”

But Birrell resolved to keep fighting for the final two days of the event.

“Having spoken with [coach] Marcus, the points look quite close between second and sixth so let’s go and see what we can do over the next four races, try and enjoy it and see how we can get on.”

Racing at the Para World Sailing Championships runs through until Saturday 28 May, with two races scheduled per day for each of the three classes.