Sailing Blog
Battle Looming on SF Bay – Melges 32 Worlds »
September 21, 2010
After a long week of preparation on San Francisco Bay, and even a longer year of regattas, training, sail testing and crew work, today marks the beginning of the Melges 32 World Championships. With some of the best pro and amateur sailing talent competing in this regatta, there are a handful of teams that can walk away with the title, but it wont be easy. Not only will the winning team have to have a great display of speed against other teams who have spent months perfecting sail plans and rig tuning scenarios, but they will also have to have great boat handling in what will almost certainly be a breezy regatta. And for those who have sailed on a 32 know, if there is a hole in your boathandling, it will be exposed in a place like San Francisco.
The Pre-Worlds concluded on Sunday with the Italian Team on B-Lin Sailing taking the title, and a nice new Rolex watch, with a few points to spare. Despite that the racing we saw last week was not very similar to what we will see in the Worlds with respect to the course location and wind speeds, the Italians did a good job of sailing clean, smart and letting their speed do the work. There were several other teams like Star, Full Throttle and defending World Champs Bliksem that showed flashes of why they have a shot at the title by winning races and finishing in the top 5.
On the Samba, we had a bit of a roster change on Monday when our tactician for the last year, Stu Bannatyne was swapped for John Kostecki who is fresh of his successful bid at the Americas Cup and a knowledgeable San Francisco Bay local. It is never easy to switch out a team member who is an extremely well respected leader, sailor and friend, but we are going to do our best to continue to compete at high level, and having Kostecki step in tactician is never a bad thing when going head to head with a fleet loaded with world class sailors. We are feeling good about chances being able to contend going into the last race of the regatta, but we also we know we have a lot of hard work between now and then. All of the groundwork has been laid with sails, rig tune and crew work, and now it is time for the real thing…no more dress rehearsals.
32 teams are here to line up for the first warning signal at 12pm pacific time. 10 races are scheduled in total over 4 days. Live video can be found at the Sailgroove site. Up to date results at Melges32.com. And stay tuned to 42marine for daily updates.
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