Women's International Championship kicks off in style
by Mark Jardine 15 Sep 18:00 BST
Practice racing ahead of the inaugural NYYC Women's International Championship © Paul Todd /
www.outsideimages.com
It's the opening day of the inaugural Women's International Championship at the New York Yacht Club and, without doubt, it is the stand-out event in sailing this week.
Twenty teams are taking part, representing Australia, Bermuda, Canada, China, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Sweden and several teams from the host nation, the USA. The teams include world and continental champions, Olympic medallists, and sailors from the America's Cup and SailGP.
The best of the best have teamed up with other top sailors from their nations and calling a favourite, or even the teams that'll likely make the top five, is near impossible.
Gathering a team of ten sailors for an event like this is no small undertaking. Everyone has their own schedule of commitments, as well as needing to work in their own downtime. At the top end of the sport the pace is pretty relentless, and the autumn sees a lot of top keelboat sailors gathering in Sardinia at the magnificent Yacht Club Costa Smeralda for the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup and the Rolex Swan Cup. The lure of this inaugural competition though has had the desired effect and each boat is stacked with top sailing talent.
The New York Yacht Club is no stranger to hosting pinnacle one-design yacht racing competitions, with the Rolex NYYC Invitational Cup first being run in 2009, and a major fixture on the international racing calendar. This event was initially held in Swan 42 yachts, which is a cruiser-racer, but it was a decade ago that the club made the commitment to find a new yacht to run its international sailing competitions in and it proved to be an inspired decision.
Nineteen submissions were made from top designers around the world, with the club settling on a Mark Mills 37-footer, which is now known as the IC37. This is an out-and-out racing machine, which also benefits from a simple deck layout, and took the Invitational Cup to the next level. Twenty yachts were built for the club, which owns and maintains them, a task which few clubs in the world could hope to achieve.
This inaugural event was massively over-subscribed: fifty teams applied for one of the twenty slots available, proving just how popular the concept is. Sail-World.com's Australian editor covered the preparations of Katie Spithill and her Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club team in a recent editorial which you can read here and they've been practicing in an MC38 which Spithill regarded a great training platform, "We are grateful that our launch pad in the MC38 has actually assisted us because in my view it carries more load. So having set the bar there already is very beneficial. Brady Lowe is coming along as our Coach, so that's pretty exciting, as well. He will be an amazing asset to the team."
The past few days have seen the sailors out on the yachts, familiarising themselves with everything so that they can work best together as a team. Some have managed to get out in an IC37 beforehand, which is of course ideal training, while others have used boats like the Farr 40.
Team DutchSail's Saar van Bemmel used the time to hone their manoeuvres, "We have mainly focused on boat handling, getting to know the boat, tacks, gybes and lots of starts."
The series itself allows no margin for error. Twelve races are scheduled with no discard meaning that a bad race is going to be there on your results regardless, and I fully expect this to be the epitome of a high scoring regatta. Being able to extract yourself from the pack - the get out of jail card - could make all the difference.
I've just watched the first race on the tracker and it was fascinating. The Swedish team skippered by Ida Swensson took the honours, but they had to do it the hard way. They were one of a group who came in from the port side at the pre-start, tacking over relatively late and ending up on the second row at the gun. They then had to live in a narrow lane beneath the Royal Thames Yacht Club and Sail Newport teams, while also not falling into the gas of the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club team.
After a few hundred yachts they were forced to tack away, ducking a few sterns, but finding a lane began to claw their way back into contention. At this point they were lying in the bottom half of the fleet, so had a lot of work to do.
The windshifts were pretty wild at times, which gave opportunity for those teams with eyes out of the boat, and Swensson was calling the shots perfectly, leaving helm Vilma Bobeck to keep the yacht moving fast. Midway up the first leg they were up to a podium position, without having to bang the corner.
Towards the windward mark they were left of centre, and their approach to the mark was crucial. Weaving past the starboard tackers they hooked into a gap to round in seventh, well in touch with the leaders.
With the gybing angles at around 90 degrees, the shifts downwind were just as important, and the Swedish team picked off boats one-by-one to reach the leeward gate in third place, with just the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron and Royal Norwegian Yacht Club teams ahead of them. By the final windward mark it was just Lisa Ross's Canadian team ahead, but they had a healthy 200 metre lead.
The winning move came when Ross and her Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron decided to gybe early, with the majority of the fleet favouring the right hand side of the course. Their lead evaporated, allowing Swensson and her Swedish team to pounce to the win, with Ragna Agerup's Norwegian team second and Megan Grapengeter-Rudnick's Sail Newport team third, relegating Lisa Ross and her team to fourth.
Just eight seconds separated the top three after an hour and five minutes of racing, and I expect the rest of the week to play out in a similar way. It was a tactical masterclass by Ida Swensson and her team, backed up by solid boatspeed. I know it's only the first race, but that was an impressive performance.
Four races are scheduled today, and I've got a screen dedicated to it. It's not the same as a live video with commentary, but it's still gripping stuff. In many ways it's easier to follow on the tracker as the shifts are so obvious. Here's the link so you can follow it yourself, and with Paul Todd out on the water to capture the images the event comes alive.
We'll have all the daily reports on Sail-World.com and YachtsandYachting.com. If the first race was anything to go by then this is going to be an absolute classic.
Mark Jardine
Sail-World.com and YachtsandYachting.com Managing Editor