World Womens 470 medalists tell their story on the Silver medal win

by Jo Aleh and Olivia Powrie on 21 Jul 2010
Silver medalists at the recent 2010 Womens World 470 Championship Jo Aleh and Olivia Powrie give Sail-World readers and insight into how the World Championship unfolded from their perspective:

Hi All

As some of you might already know, we have had a rather successful 2010 World Champs regatta, we were in the top three the whole way through, in and out of the lead, culminating in a winner takes all medal race, which unfortunately did not go in our favour, and so we ended up with the silver medal. A result we are very encouraged by, as we seem to be tracking well, and as usual have even more to work on for next year!!

So, now for a bit of a recap of how our regatta played out...

We arrived in Holland 12 days out from the start of racing, so we could have a slightly more chilled build up, without the rush we usually end up in. The weather was a very welcome surprise, with temperatures in the high twenties (which of course only lasted until the day before the regatta started...). We managed to get in some good training pre-event, with a great Kiwi contingency of six boats, a two fold increase on last year!

The racing started out rather slowly, with no wind on the first day, and some fun hours drifting around on the water (with all three of us girls boats hooked up on the tow, and motoring slowly into the tide, in an effort to not get swept down the coast.). There was an exciting ending to the day however, as a rather viscous thunderstorm hit just as we had got ashore (some boats were still coming in - and had a bit on!).

Day two finally brought some action, even if it was rather slow paced. We had three races in lightish conditions, with a very strong tide to make it more interesting. We started out well, with two second placings after some great downwind legs into the tide. The third race of the day was even crazier, with the wind dropping out a touch, and the tide fully on the go, which meant we didnt have to tack at all on the upwind leg, with the tide dragging us so far sideways. Annoyingly for us, the race was abandoned for some unknown reason, with us only 10 minutes from finishing another race in second.

The third day was finally more like we had been wanting, with a decent breeze building, we had a good day with a first and a fourth, and were hoping to get another race in, but a thunderstorm was apparently on the way, and we were sent in to wait ashore until 6pm, by which time the storm still hadn’t passed, and we were called off for the day.

Day four was a crazy day, the wind was howling when we got down the the yacht club, and we were a little surprised to get sent out to race. We got out to the course and did all our normal warm ups, and it was fresh, but we were still mostly in control, so we were a bit annoyed when after an hour out in massive wind and waves thrashing the boat and sails, we were sent back ashore a few minutes before start time...

Then came hours of waiting around for the wind to ease, which it did eventually, and we were sent out for a 7.15pm start time. Where we had an ok race, with one of more missed opportunities than we would have liked, but still came away with a third.

The next day was the first day of finals (with the fleet split into gold and silver fleets), and the breeze was once again rather fresh, so we were hoping for a good day. It started out badly, when halfway up the first beat the main halyard snapped and the mainsail came tumbling down. We capsized the boat and tried to pull it back up and lash it off, but it was more than a two person job so we pulled out and found Nathan to help us get it ready for the next race. After that ordeal, we just wanted to get some points on the board, but couldn't quite get the boat going, and ended up with a second and a third.

The last day of fleet racing, was yet another day of breeze, and we finally got the boat up and going, flying around the course after some rather average starts (we were just trying to make sure we were not ocs, as we could not afford another bad race), to end up with a first, second and third, to finish our series with no result out of the top four.

We went into the medal race one point from the dutch, with a virtual match race to decide the winner. We pushed hard, but were not quite able to take the lead, and ended up getting tangled in too many other boats, both press and 470’s! not to mention a rowing boat that somehow managed to get in the middle of our course, and in our way... But it was still a great learning experience, and we have a few lessons to take on for next year, and for now are just happy to get our first World Championship medal, and know we are still on track for London...

So now its time for a few days off, before getting some sailing time in Weymouth before the Sail for Gold regatta in mid August.

Thank you to everyone for the emails, and the messages of support!

Jo and Polly

Special thanks to our supporters and suppliers:

SPARC and the New Zealand Academy of Sport, Yachting New Zealand, Donaghys, Kaenon Sunglasses, Harken, Mackay Boats and Quantum Sails.

Also a big thank you to Nathan Handley (our resident super-coach) for all his help and support on and off the water.