And they're up!
by John Curnow, Editor, Sail-World AUS 25 Aug 2019 15:00 PDT
The SYRA 18 prototype in action © Loris von Siebrenthal
Back in Where's Wally? we looked at the incredible new foiler, the SYRA18. Please go back and check that out if you cannot remember it. Since then, Nils Frei and Yves Detrey have had their prototype for the monohull that morphs into a cat out on the water, which is what you can see here.
Nils commented afterwards, "We had two sailing sessions, so the pictures are from the very beginning in 10-12 TWS. We are very happy with the boat's behaviour, and the canting foil. Of course there is still a lot of optimising potential, but we believe to be on the right track."
Clearly we are too, so we look forward to learning more about their developments as they occur...
So who's El Chappo?
Well his name is David Chapman, and he has been racking up a few more-than-notable-mentions of late, and that is on top of his first-class pedigree. I spoke with him just recently to talk about them, and most specifically, the latest win.
"Winning the Sailing Champions League last weekend was a great achievement for our team and club. Zac, Charlie, Finn and myself had never sailed together, but after two brief training sessions the day before the event, and getting absolutely destroyed by the NRV Team, we managed to have a good discussion about what we need to work on and how we were going to make the four-boat Final", said Chapman.
"When you go into a regatta like this with not enough preparation you really need to be open minded, be able to self-coach, move forward after a mistake, and keep learning. I was extremely proud of our young team, they were relentless on the boat."
"I was the only onboard with experience in the J/70, coming off a recent win at the German Nationals. The bowman from that boat was on the NRV team, so we were fortunate enough to get some good insights from the some of the stronger teams."
"Finn brought in his extensive high-level skills as a former Gold Medallist Youth Worlds. Zac and Charlie are highly competitive match racing crew, who are getting stronger every season. Whilst going back through the videos, I noticed that no one came close to matching these guys whilst hiking."
"Once we shocked everyone and made the Final, we were confident of how we wanted to race and what we needed to do. We had two fantastic starts, and the rest is history. It was an amazing turn around from that first training session with the team from NRV who would come in second."
"The experience from the wins to claim the Sayonara Cup, and also the newly formed National Sailing League earlier this year played a big part in our result. Moving forward from here, I would like to help more with our Youth Teams, start planning for our defence of the NSL, Sayonara Cup and look into making other challenges. We are also looking into a youth Etchells team."
"Personally I'd like to see this Club League format work. The short course racing and stadium sailing really can get all club members involved and active. We would like to dedicate our Win to RSYS members who recently passed away, Ruth McCance and Sarah Goddard-Jones", Chapman closed with.
More Youths across the Harbour...
Tom Grimes, James Hodgson, Jess Grimes and Harry Hall from the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia led the recent Youth Match Racing World Championship from Day One, finishing the first round robin with a 10 - 1 scorecard. In the abridged round two, they continued on their merry way, with four bullets from five starts.
Interestingly, Australia has now won the Youth Match Racing World Championship three times, and also finished in the silver medal position in the other two times the regatta has been staged. Of course that all means that Australia is the only country to be in the top two each time the World Championship has been staged. Well done to all the sailors, coaches, and club machinery that has made that sort of remarkable feat possible.
Golden words and deeds
Just have to close with the words of Olympic Gold Medallist, Dick Sargeant. "Anything is possible on the occasion. It certainly was for us." He was quite the inspirational guy to speak with, and very much proud of his achievements during his stellar career inshore and offshore. In combination with the unfettered access to the Australian Sailing Team that I had been given by Australian Sailing it was quite the memorable week. Many thanks to the sailors for being so available, and happy to talk about their highs and the lows. Also, well done to World Sailing's Daniel Smith for ensuring we got all the information we required in such a timely manner. Nice one!
Right oh - here today there are some gems for you to review like Fireballs, J/111s, TP52s, Hamilton Island, TF35, Invitational Cup at the NYYC, Dragons, J/70s, the Clipper, the Ready Steady Tokyo Olympic test event, Vipers, hardware from Karver, 5.5s, OKs, and certainly there is much, much more.
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John Curnow
Editor, Sail-World AUS