2022 505 Pre-Worlds at the Royal Cork Yacht Club - Day 1
by Jordan Spencer 5 Aug 11:49 PDT
3-13 August 2022
505 Pre-Worlds at Crosshaven Day 1 © Christophe Favreau /
www.christophefavreau.com
The first day of racing in Crosshaven was challenging. Three races of an hour each in shifty conditions with large pressure changes, saw big numbers on each team's scorecard.
Race 1 started in 12-15knots of wind, but almost immediately after the gun, the wind dropped to 4-5kn. This was the story of the day with direction changes of up to 30 degrees and large pressure differences as clouds moved through. The gate boat for race 1 was Nathan Batchelor and Sam Pascoe GBR 9240 and the gate role can either be a curse or a benefit. For this team the pathfinder role didn't seem too bad, but they came 6th in that race, their worst result of the day. Regardless, they were the one boat to shine, backing up their sixth by winning race 2 and 3.
Nathan and Sam have been racing 505 since 2015 with several top 10 and close finishes at World Championship level. They both work together at Ovington Boats, one of the builders of the 505s. Sam is a two time International 14 World Champion and as a team they were second at the Fireball World Champs. They certainly looked like they had good speed today and given the forecast will now take on the favourite mantle.
For the casual observer it looked like the USA and German boats were the standout performers on the day, but given their sheer numbers your observation would be biased, because according to the results at the time of writing, the next best placed boat was the Aussie team of Peter Nicholas and Luke Payne. From Western Australia originally, both the boys spend the majority of their time overseas, with Peter an honorary Swede and Luke part of the Danish Sail GP team. Jumping into the boat for the first time only yesterday, they didn't look to have any speed advantage but sailed smart with a 10, 4, 10 result.
For the American fans, Stuart McNay and Caleb Paine - the Olympians are marked as DNC for all 3 races. They haven't provided their sail number to the organiser's yet, but they had a very good day and were likely second or third boat on the day. From there it was Morgan Pinckney and Garrett Brown, USA 9080 and then Mike Holt and Rob Woelfel.
First female was Malin Broberg sailing with Johan Röök. The Swedish team enjoying their time as gate boat in race two gaining a second, and they are placed 5th after the days sailing. From there it is a fleet of US sailors.
Interestingly, as we were watching the third race, a strange anomaly occurred, all the red, white and green spinnakers emerged to the front of the pack and all the boats with blue spinnakers followed. It was surreal. 30-40 blue, blue and white and blue highlighted spinnakers were bringing up the rear. Perhaps tomorrow they will all be changed.
Conditions for tomorrow continue to look challenging, a light and dying Nor-Wester in the morning swinging 180 degrees in the afternoon and hopefully freshening will likely see the boats held ashore until conditions are sailable. If that is the case and the wind swings onshore, perhaps we can expect less shifts and more speed. Three more races tomorrow.
Watch for daily race reports and video highlights packages.
www.int505.org/2022-world-championship-cork