Gladwell's Line - Olympic Multihull needs to make courageous decisions

by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World.com on 7 Sep 2017 Interesting times at the Nacra 17 Worlds being staged in La Grande Motte, France.

In a speech after winning the Gold Medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics, Santiago Lange made an impassioned plea for caution to the class-fiddlers who had signalled their intention to upgrade the Nacra 17 to be a full foiler, rather than the Frankenfoiler that we had seen develop over the just concluded 2016 Olympic cycle.

The Nacra 17 was selected as the Mixed Multihull for the 2016 Olympics - with a male crew and female helmsman, or vice versa. It was a partial foiler.

Santiago Lange, a veteran of six Olympics sailed his fourth Olympic regatta in the Mixed Multihull class at Rio. He had been burned by design changes made the then International Sailing Federation in moves to add spectacle to the Sailing Olympics while adopting a policy of minimal change elsewhere.

“My story goes as follows,” Lange began. “I campaigned the Tornado for 2000 and had to change the whole boat with a spinnaker/gennaker and other reconfigurations. That was expensive. Then for the Olympics in Athens, they changed to a carbon mast – that was expensive again.

“Then I heard that World Sailing was going to keep the core classes the same for 2020 – I thought this was the best statement from World Sailing, as we need a steady sport. Now that too has changed.

“World Sailing has a responsibility to have a good vision for the future, whether they consult with designers or athletes or whoever, they have to be able to see 20 or 30 years out.

“Now we invest a lot of money in these Nacra 17's. We have four boats. We have 15 mainsails. Some mainsails we only use for one hour. We have four spinnakers with the flag, a couple of them we only use for a couple of hours.

“All the equipment we have got, we have something very cheap for the young people, and that is the future of the sport.'

Fast forward into 2017 and the decision was taken to upgrade the Nacra 17 to a full-foiler, and from a fan's point of view that was a good move. The class will be the centrepiece of the 2020 Olympics.

That is not to forget that it was at the 2012 Olympics when there was no multihull in the Olympics - now eight years on it will be the star of the show!

The issue with the Nacra 17 in the Rio 2016 version, was that it got up to some spectacular but uncontrollable antics.

One such performance was in the final race of the 2014 Sailing World Cup in Melbourne. It was blowing from the north with not a very nice sea, but still very sailable.

2008 Olympic Silver medallist Darren Bundock and crew Nina Curtis, rounded the top mark in fifth place, and played it very safe, not cracking a gennaker. By the half-way point of the final leg, they had hit the front as their competitors performed various aerial antics - all by pushing the flawed, and almost uncontrollable design too hard in the conditions.

I didn't see enough of the Nacra 17 racing at the 2016 Olympics to be able to tell if the class had improved - except for the Medal Race sailed in fresh conditions. There the flatter water made life easier, but the Nacra 17 was not the boat it could be - well compared to the AC50 in Bermuda ten months later.

Ringing the changes, and going to a full-foiling Nacra 17 has created some issues, which have surfaced over the past couple of months.

The advantage of facing the competition-testing music early is that the class gets through its issues more quickly and can be in a stable stage of development sometime in 2018, hopefully before the first of the 2020 Qualification Regattas in Aarhus, Denmark.

The other advantage of the accelerated program is that class manufacturers are working with a relatively small number of boats, being sailed by the top competitors, and it is reasonable to assume that if anyone is going to break a boat, it will come from this experienced group.

Top sailors being what they are will always try and push the rules - and the New Zealand crew of Gemma Jones and Jason Saunders have been doing that - experimenting with sailing the Nacra 17 upwind flying a gennaker.

There are a few issues in this. First, the class allows crews the choice as to whether the male or female component of the boat is helming or crewing. There is no firm view on which is best, but almost all opt for female crews and male helms. In the 2016 Olympics, Gemma Jones was the only female steering.

In upwind spinnaker mode, her crew Jason Saunders should have a physical advantage hanging off the end of a gennaker sheet without being dragged through the sheet blocks.

The idea of sailing the Olympic multihull upwind with a gennaker is not new. In the 2008 Olympics, John Lovell and Charlie Ogletree came out for the first race with a special flat-cut gennaker. They literally went like a cut cat up the first beat, and were well in front until the breeze faded somewhat at the top mark. After rounding well in front, they were quickly run down by the rest of the fleet with fuller more conventional gennakers.

The US representatives finished 14th out of 15 in that race and went on to place 15th in the regatta.

Nine years later, it would have been interesting to see how Jones and Saunders would have fared.

But they were cut off by the class who in the course of a couple of meetings held at the World Championship, decided by democratic vote to ban the practice.

That's a disappointing decision as given the experience of 2008, there is no guarantee that it would have been an advantage in a race - and if the practice had worked, then the class could have been better for it.

The fear expressed in the report from the meeting was that the rig might not be strong enough to cope with the added load. But given that all boats race with gear from a single manufacturer, if the crews are going to break their boats through sailing in gennaker mode upwind, then that is that crew's decision and issue.

Another factor in the upwind gennaker equation is the fact that in a mixed gender class, there are few female helms.

By allowing upwind gennaker flying and a physical advantage to those who do sail with male crews should encourage a mixed gender class to become genuinely mixed gender in respect of function. Maybe the pendulum would swing the other way completely and we have mostly female helms with male crews.

That would give more opportunity for female helms to become Olympic medalists. That in turn opens the pathway for female sailors to events like the America's Cup, and the professional circuit events.

The other ingredient in this discussion is that the New Zealand helm Gemma Jones' father and coach, Murray Jones is a six times America's Cup winner and sparmaker. Wouldn't he be in a good position to assess the risks and strains to the gear?

It is hard to accept the official view of the matter expressed by the class in its report released today. From an outside perspective it would seem that the vote was a self-serving one to effect a class rule change and to ensure the Nacra 17 was sailed in a particular way - even though the Kiwis used exactly the same gear as all others in the class.

As a class the Nacra 17 needs to have the courage to keep moving outside its comfort zone - and not pulling back when there are some great learning experiences on offer.