International 14 Team Racing Worlds at the Royal Canadian YC - Overall
by Andrew Handasyde Dick 12 Sep 2013 07:51 BST
7-22 September 2013
The second day of Team Racing at the international 14 world championships started with the completion of the round robin, with 13 races to complete a full 7 team round robin. The Japanese boats had arrived on Monday afternoon, and with a little help from a German boat they were ready to compete, with the schedule adjusted so the had one race in each remaining pair of starts.
Racing started on time, with 5-8 knots from the south west building through the day to 12-15 knots by the end of the round robin. Team GBR 1 continued their dominance of the event winning all 4 of their remaining matches easily, giving them a 6-0 scoreline and a straight pass to the finals.
Team GBR 2 started the second day with an easy win against the Japanese, but then had the Australians and GBR 1 to race. A very close prestart against the Australians was scupper end by a 30 degree left wind shift at 15 seconds to go making the line difficult to lay on starboard, this left 2 British boats below the pin, spinning round to cross the line and allowed the Australians to sail into the distance for an easy win. The race against GBR 1 went to form, with the first team sailing to a comprehensive 1-2-3-4 win.
A slight miscalculation by GBR 2 when calculating their results yesterday meant that they had only won 2 and ended up in a 3 way tie for fourth, from which the Germans came out on top on points scored. This gave a final of GBR 1 vs Australia with a 3rd/4th playoff between CAN 1 and Germany.
The finals started with 2 very close races, with GBR 1 winning the first and Australia winning the second. Unfortunately in the pre-start for the third race Brad Devine (Aus) had a breakage putting him out of the remaining races, giving GBR 1 an insurmountable advantage. GBR 1 converted this advantage to sail to 2 further comprehensive wins, becoming Team Racing World Champions. Team GBR 1; GBR 1544, Pamela, Douglas Pattison and Mark Tait; GBR 1520 Roborowski, Katie Nurton and Nigel Ash; GBR 1543, Sam Pascoe and Alex Knight; GBR 1549 Andy and Tom Partington.
Tuesday evening also saw the the Team Racing Dinner, and the 14 fleet's first invite into the smart areas of the RCYC clubhouse. The main event of the evening was the team skits with the Australians testing our strength, GBR 1 testing our pole dancing skills, Germany testing our athletic beer drinking skills and GBR 2 introducing super sumo to the event.
The teams now have 2 days off to practice and check their preparation for the World Championships with a practice race on Friday and the first Championship race on Saturday.
More information at www.i14.ca/worlds and lots of photos at https://www.facebook.com/I14Worlds2013.