Left: coming straight off the America’s Cup in Bermuda the already intimidating combo of Outteridge/Ashby/Jensen proved as competitive as you’d expect during the first SuperFoiler Grand Prix series in 2018, winning four of the five rounds to take the title. However, even for a crew of this pedigree the boats themselves offered big challenges, including this potentially particularly nasty moment (above). Outteridge has also done some swimming in the past 18 months, here (right) running across the Artemis AC50 during a gybe, missing his footing jumping into his foxhole and keeping going all the way into the water (and then the chase boat)
working with Jason [Waterhouse] and Lisa [Darmanin] along with our own coach Darren Bundock. It’s interesting, the Nacra is about four-
point foiling and right now they only foil upwind in a very narrow band of condi- tions; most of the time when you try to foil upwind you’re just losing distance. Haylee and I spent a bit of time working
on the boathandling side and then we did two events to learn how to race together – and how to communicate together. Then we put all that together at the
worlds where we were second. It was a surprise to make the podium. We over- achieved on what we were hoping for. Having said that, we did work really hard to get those results and made sure the boat was optimised as best as it could be. SH: It’s hard to think of anyone who has got across as many types of foiling machine as you, and presumably that breadth of experience has helped you get on the pace in the Nacra… NO: The only things I’m probably missing are the foiling kites and windsurfers, which I am keen to try soon because I think there’s quite a lot to learn from them. But, yes, I’ve sailed pretty much every type of foiler out there, from the ones with no flight control such as a Nacra, an A-Cat, the Flying Phantoms and the Nacra 20, where the foils are fixed and you just fly the boat on its inherent stability or you move around to keep it in the air. Then you’ve got the Moth which has a mechanical flight-control system which you can tune with various functions and then there are the bigger boats like the Cup boats that I’ve obviously spent a lot of time sailing, which have electronic control systems. I think it would be really hard for me to
say which is the best. But having the ability to sail all of them and understand the super high-tech side of things versus the very basic side of things is what gives you the most rounded understanding of how foiling works.
SH: Those Phantoms look pretty out of control. How did you get on with them? NO: We tried to do a bit of sailing in Bermuda on a couple of Phantoms as part of Artemis. Sailing them in flat water you could definitely get it ripping and in a straight line it was fine. But trying to get that thing to manoeuvre and stay on the foils is quite a work of art. I think the Nacra 20 has a more stable foil in terms of its shape, so it’s a little easier. We were able to get some foiling gybes happening on a Nacra 20 because it’s a bit wider, a bit more foil area. The Phantom is prob - ably the most unstable boat to sail. The Nacra 17, as the Olympic boat, is I’d say on the easier end of catamaran foiling. The fundamental thing with most foiling boats is they’re good in flat water… but they’re really not too good in waves! That’s where the Moth wins out
because it has a control system that keeps the boat foiling nicely regardless of sea state. And you can change the settings on your flight-control system, particularly the gain, to make it work in different sea states. So if you really want to learn the basics of foiling and how it all works and how to tune it then the Moth still gives you the possibilities to learn the most. SH: Talking of waves, you’re looking at pretty big waves for the Olympic venue in Enoshima. There has been a spate of injuries in the Nacra 17 fleet this year, including in the windy week leading up to the Sailing World Cup in September… NO: The biggest cause of injury right now is someone falling off and getting struck by the rudder. The rudders are mounted really wide on these boats and they’re mounted wide for a couple of reasons. The most important reason I think they’ve put them so far outboard is to get them out of the wake of the daggerboards, because if you mount them in the centre of transom then the wake that comes off the foil ends up all over the rudder and you lose steer- age quite easily. I haven’t sailed the boats
with the rudders mounted in any other position, but I believe when they were ini- tially sea-trialling the boats they were in the centre and they had a few issues; so they moved them outboard and the boat went better. But what happens right now is if you
fall off, you’re pretty much guaranteed that the vertical [of the rudder] hits you; if that doesn’t get you the horizontal is defi- nitely going to get you if the hull is flying quite high because the horizontal is so close to the surface. It’s different from an A-Cat where the
rudders are actually mounted more on the inboard side of the hull; there’s a rule that says that the winglets can’t extend outside max beam, so at least if you fall off and you go vertical you won’t hit the rudder. I’ve voiced my strong concerns about
this. I think the Nacra class really need to push to get the rudders inboard – and abide by this max beam rule for the rudders because I think we have a big safety issue. The sailors are then going to have to work at how to deal with the wake interaction on the rudders because it doesn’t seem to be a problem on the A-Cat. I’d like to think that it’s achievable on the Nacra as well. In fact, I’m sure it is. SH: Do you believe it’s possible to make those changes in time for Tokyo 2020? NO: Yes! I believe it is because it’s a safety concern. And you saw how many people went to hospital in Japan from injuries due to rudder strikes. My sister gets banged up quite a bit. She’s fallen off a few times and we’re at the point that when it blows more than 18kt and there are waves we just don’t go sailing because it’s too dangerous. During our training in Japan before the
event we had a few days of 15-16kt with big waves and a lot of people were opting not to go sailing because they didn’t want to hurt themselves. And that’s not nice. It’s a great venue for the 470s and the
Finn, all those boats that are basically good seaworthy boats. But because this
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