Yachts & Yachting – August 2019

Previous spread

Charlotte Dobson

and Saskia Tidey

giving the Dutch

world champions

a hard time in

the 49erFX

Above

The full range

of conditions

at Weymouth

and Portland

Below left

Saxton and

Boniface have

maintained their

2018 form

Below right

Fletcher and

Bithell won

European gold

James Peters and Fynn Sterritt also

turned up the heat in the nal couple of

days of the Europeans to end up third

behind the Kiwis and their British rivals

for Olympic selection. What does all

this mean for Japan next year? e RYA

plays its cards close to its chest, so it’s

not clear what signicance Weymouth

held for the British crews, but at the

moment Fletcher/Bithell would seem to

hold the upper hand over Peters/Sterritt.

It’s a closer-run contest in the Nacra

17 this season, aer John Gimson and

Anna Burnet returned from a productive

winter’s training in Uruguay with the

top South American teams, including

the reigning Olympic champions

from Argentina, Santiago Lange and

Cecilia Saroli Carranza. “We had

to do something dierent,” Gimson

shrugged to me in Weymouth, tacitly

acknowledging that Ben Saxton and

Nikki Boniface were the British front

runners from the 2018 season. Burnet

said: “At the beginning of our time

down there we couldn’t get anywhere

close to the others when we were

going downwind in waves, but we

started to work it out and it’s really

helped us in the big waves here.”

Aer a couple of big days out in

Weymouth Bay, some sailors were

referring to Weymouth as ‘Tokyo

Lite’. e 2020 Olympic venue in

Enoshima is capable of delivering

some enormous Pacic swells, so

the conditions in Weymouth were

a welcome practice opportunity.

e Italian team of Ruggero Tita and

Caterina Banti have been the dominant

force over the past 18 months or so, and

the Italians were again looking like the

form crew in Weymouth, but Gimson

and Burnet, and the Danish team of Lin

Cenholt and CP Lubeck, were also taking

their turn at the top of the leaderboard.

However, when the breeze dropped light

and the water attened out, Saxton and

FEATURE NACRAS & 49ers

ALL PHOTOS: NICK DEMPSEY/RYA

A

er what seems like an

interminable series of

light-airs regattas on

the Olympic circuit, the

racing in Weymouth

for the Volvo 49er, 49erFX and Nacra

European Championships was a breath

of fresh air. e seven-day event –

which some of the competitors felt was

maybe a day too long – delivered the

full spread of conditions, from high

wind to no wind, big rolling waves to

glassy at water in Portland Harbour. 

e only race that didn’t happen

was the medal race for the 49er men,

although aer a whopping 19 qualifying

and gold eet races, no one was

complaining. In that class, Pete Burling

and Blair Tuke are getting back to their

best at an alarming rate, scoring a

hattrick of bullets on one of the windy,

wavy days out in Weymouth Bay. e

reigning Olympic champions looked

more mortal in the lighter winds of the

nal two days, opening the door for

Brits Dylan Fletcher and Stu Bithell to

make big in-roads on the Kiwi lead.

Perhaps Fletcher and Bithell could have

overturned the Kiwis with the medal

race, but it wasn’t to be. e Brits, who

won pretty much all the major 49er

events in 2017 including the Worlds and

the Europeans, are coming on strong

again aer a below-par 2018 season.

Fletcher and Bithell were only a week

back from San Francisco, where they’d

nished a very creditable third place

at the SailGP regatta. “e best racing

I’ve ever done,” enthused Fletcher,

who is proving that the steering F50

foiling catamarans is no distraction

from his day job of 49er racing,

and may in fact be complementary

to the slower ski sailing.

54 Yachts & Yachting August 2019 yachtsandyachting.co.uk