SAP 505 Worlds - Hamlin and Zinn survive a destructive day in Denmark

by Dansk Sejlunion on 31 Jul 2010 The SAP 505 World Championships have started with a bang in Aarhus, Denmark with the breeze gusting up to 30 knots. Too much of a bang for many of the 126 teams who struggled to complete two gruelling opening heats in this toughest of regattas.

Among the many casualties were some of the favourites for the world title. Gear failure forced the 2007 World Champions, Denmark’s Jan Saugmann and Morten Ramsbæk, to retire after they had been leading race one. Runner-up in last year’s Worlds, Mike Holt and Carl Smit of the USA, profited from the Danes’ demise and moved into the lead, only to suffer their own set of breakdowns. They too, failed to complete either race.

Britain’s Ian Pinnell and Ian Mitchell, former world champions, took up the reins at the front of the pack and sailed a steady race to cross the line first, with USA’s Howie Hamlin and Andy Zinn in second.

In heat two, Hamlin and Zinn took up the lead for a good part of the race, with Germany’s three-time World Champion Wolfgang Hunger and Julian Kleiner in hot pursuit. Hunger attacked up the final beat and Hamlin failed to cover him as closely as he might have done, allowing the German crew to slip past for the winner’s gun.

Hamlin may not have won a race, but he’s leading the regatta after a tough day. He’s happy with that. Runner-up seven times and World Champion in 1999, the legend from Long Beach is competing at his 30th 505 World Championship. Today his experience showed. 'Perfect 505 conditions,' he smiled. While others were facing a long evening of boat work, Hamlin’s nine-year-old hull emerged from a tough day unscathed. Zinn looked ready for another two races. 'It wasn’t even that windy out there,' he said, an observation that few others would have agreed with. Even by the standards of a world 505 fleet, today was a tough one, with the 25-30 knot breeze combining with the waves to test the crews and equipment to breaking point.

Like the Americans, German team Stefan Bohm and Gerald Roos sailed very consistently to notch up two third places, one point ahead of Hunger/Kleiner. As for Saugmann, who has now used up both of the discards available in this nine-race series, he was philosophical more than upset. 'So many things went so wrong today, we have to laugh about it,' he said. 'First one of the trapeze rings broke, and then later in the race the spinnaker pulley at the top of the mast broke and the halyard snapped.' With the spinnaker falling in the water they sailed over the soggy sail and did well to avoid a capsize. They had hoped to regroup and get fixed in time for the second race. But when they came ashore they discovered the halyard had sawed its way about 30cm down the front face of the mast. So they have to replace the mast with a new one before tomorrow’s single scheduled race.

Mike Holt is paying the price for racing in a brand new, untested boat that he has borrowed for the Worlds. 'We had half an hour sailing in it yesterday,' he shrugged. 'The boat is fine, we were going fast today, but the fittings let us down, just not strong enough.' After a broken mainsheet ratchet made the boat much harder to sail, they finally had to retire from race one when the highly-loaded rig adjustment fittings pulled out of their anchor points in the boat.

Holt and Smit will be working hard tonight replacing equipment with bigger, heavier stuff that they can be confident will get them through the rest of the regatta. But Smit knew that today was the day that got away. 'Those were our conditions, just like sailing at home in San Francisco Bay,' he said. 'The breeze is meant to be dropping lighter in the next few days, so it’s going to be hard winning after what happened today.'

The war of attrition has begun. For those who aren’t working on fixing their boats this evening, they might get a chance to go back through all the tracking data and video footage from the race course today. Not that anyone needs to learn the lesson from such a brutal outing. If you keep your boat upright, and if you can keep your boat in one piece, then you’ll do well.



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