29er Worlds at Lake Silvaplana, Switzerland overall
by Mike Jones 1 Sep 2004 12:04 BST
21-28 August 2004
The first Gold fleet start in a force 2 at the 29er Worlds on Lake Silvaplana © Mike Jones
Silvaplana, near St Moritz in Switzerland, is a relatively small lake, about 1⁄2 a mile wide by a 1 mile long. Mountains rise steeply on both sides, making it a natural viewing arena. Spectators can choose whether to view the starts, the finish or something in between, from very close quarters. There is no sailing club building, showers or changing rooms, but nobody cares. The organisers erect a massive heated tent, which serves for meetings, measurement, boat repair, changing, eating, whatever. There is a permanent restaurant, bar and night club which serves the other off-water needs excellently.
The local wind, which is similar to Garda, is called the Majola, and comes in from the Southwest, if the sky is blue, at 11 o’clock and blows at 10 – 20 knots. What makes Silvaplana more interesting than Garda is there is no clear winning route around the course, the fast lanes being far more subtle to pick up. If there is cloud, racing relies on the prevailing winds, which are light and shifty.
Snow often fell on the mountain tops at night and the overall effect was outstandingly beautiful: sunshine, blue sky, white mountain tops and shimmering azure water presenting a magnificent backdrop to the brightly coloured spinnakers. As Russell Coutts (yes, the man himself) said in his opening address, this type of spectator friendly venue and this type of boat was the future of sailing – he just wished he were 20 years younger. The 29er Worlds have grown each year and this trend continued with an entry of 84 boats from 12 countries.
The qualifying series was run with 2 equal-strength fleets of 42 boats over 3 days. 3 boats shone. Jaques / Sign from the U.K., Lehtinen / Pennanen from Finland and O’Connor / Babbage from Australia, the overwhelming winners of the recent International event in Weymouth. These boats scored respectively 12, 13, 16 points. A distant fourth, on 45, were last year’s runners up Bettini / Villambrosa from Argentina. Just 25 boats qualified for the Gold fleet, leaving 59 in the Silver Fleet.
The Gold series started in the lightest of winds. Jaques / Sign read the difficult conditions perfectly and horizoned the rest to score a 1. Lehtinen / Pennanen were nowhere, having gone right on a left paying course, and O’Connor / Babbage recovered from a poor start to score a 6. At the end of this difficult day, Jaques / Sign (scoring 1, 9, 7) had extended their lead over Lehtinen / Pennanen (scoring a disastrous 15, 6, 12) to 5 points, while O’Connor / Babbage (scoring 6, 1, 9) were now within 1 point of the Finns. Bettinin / Villambrosa had the best day (scoring 3, 3, 2) and closed to within 17 points of the Australians.
All to play for on the final day, which had the best wind of the week and 4 races scheduled. The Finns came out fighting. On a port biased line they started twice at the pin end to score 2 bullets to Jaques / Sign’s two 3rds and narrow the gap to just 1 point with 2 races to go. O’Connor / Babbage had probably blown their chances with a 2, 7.
The wind was clocking gradually right as the penultimate race started. Lehtinen / Pennanen again started left and went to the left shore, while Jaques / Sign started centre and went for the right shore. Who was right? They first crossed halfway up the beat with the Finns just 2 boat lengths up. Nothing in it. They rounded in 3rd, Jaques / Sign 4th. Then, disaster for the Finns. Their spinnaker halyard had grown a knot, the kite wouldn’t fly and 4 boats passed them as they struggled to undo the knot. O’Connor / Babbage flew downwind to round the gate in 2nd behind Visser / Wheeler (GBR) with Jaques / Sign a close 3rd. The Finns pulled back 3 places in the next two legs and at the start of the final beat it was O’Connor / Babbage, Jaques / Sign, Visser / Wheeler, Lehtinen / Pennanen and that’s how it finished.
1 race to go. Jaques / Sign were now on 32, Lehtinen / Pennanen 35, O’Connor / Babbage 40. Again the Finns went left. This time the Brits played the middle, leaving the right hand shore to the New Zealanders who rounded 1st. Jaques Sign rounded a solid 2nd, Chapman / Peel (GBR) 3rd, O’Connor / Babbage 4th. The veering wind had now gone too far right for the Finns and they rounded in 7th. The New Zealanders extended their lead as the final race progressed, while Jaques / Sign were content to loose cover the Finns, who managed to pick up one place to finish 6th. This was enough to secure 2nd place overall, 2 points ahead of O’Connor / Babbage.
Jaques / Sign scored a comfortable 2nd to win the World Championship by a margin of 7 points, worthy winners after a season where they had won every major event bar the International trophy at Weymouth.
So ended the best 29er World Championship ever. The British team had 5 boats in the top 10, making them the top nation, while Finland had 2, Australia 2, Argentine 1. The Women’s trophy went to Silja Lehtinen and Silja Kanerva of Finland who did very well to finish 7th overall in a very strong fleet.
The last night party lived up to the quality of the event, the dancing going on ‘til 4 a.m. San Francisco will have to go some, in 2005, to better this.
For more information and full results go to www.29er-worlds.ch