Update
This year’s breezy J/70 Europeans in Vigo lacked some of the shore drama of last year’s world championship in Porto Cervo, which was coloured by claims and counter-claims of cheating with several of the skippers banned from the sport for (very) short periods. Since then more has surfaced about some of the alleged transgressions; custom keels and rudders we knew about, also the ballast ‘optimisations’, but swapping a legal for an illegal keel before and after measurement... the rest of your life must be pretty sad. And this year’s event, the 2018 European Champion is Alberto Rossi’s Enfant Terrible, Papa stealing the glory for once from his very fast daughter – and Seahorse Sailor of the Month – Claudia on Petite Terrible who in Spain ‘only’ managed 6th in a pro-laden 70-boat fleet
the new boats are a step beyond; but Paprec in 2013-mode still won a race and finished second in the coastal showing the closeness of the racing. We’re talking about very small increments. Design differences between Botín and Vrolijk? It is still a bit early
to judge but the biggest difference I pick up from the rail is the Vrolijk boat has a pretty nice high mode. Yet when we were in a spot to gain we could very subtly do so. Our own improvement list is no more complicated than shaving
off the inconsistencies. We know the law of averages works in our favour by doing so; as always this fleet is not about winning the races that you lead at the top mark but more so turning a 9th at mark 1 into a 4th at the finish.
SALVATION? – Bernardo Sánchez It’s no news to most following Olympic sailing that the US has slipped significantly since Mark Reynolds’ run in the Star fleet between 1988 and 2000. Recent returns from the World Cup in Marseille show the US
scored a fourth in the Nacra 17 with the mixed team of Riley Gibbs and Louisa Chafee. That’s about it. Not much more to get excited about. However, the news that kitefoiling will probably be on the Olympic menu for the 2024 Games in Paris is reason to hope for a decent US showing in at least one discipline. US riders have been leading an impressive wave of results, mainly
coming out of San Francisco, the epicentre of foil-racing in the US. The announcement that the US Sailing team will move their training centre to Treasure Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay, and the fact that Los Angeles will host the 2028 summer games, are both further reasons for optimism. San Francisco has embraced kite-foiling just as it did windsurfing
many years ago. And at the front of the movement is the St Francis YC; once considered the ‘establishment’ in Bay Area sailing, the club recently completed a successful hosting of the 2018 Hydrofoil Pro Tour with 50 of the world’s top foilers in attendance. And responding quickly to developments at the World Sailing meetings
12 SEAHORSE
in London, within the crowd and watching closely were key members of the US Sailing Kitefoiling Development Team. Significantly for US Olympic hopes, some of our current best
foilers have already demonstrated skills in high-performance skiffs and come with an appreciation of Olympic-style course racing, its rules and structure, and the level of commitment required to be successful. A small group of the most promising athletes have now been picked by US Sailing and have been fed into the fast-spinning hamster wheel of an Olympic campaign. Daniela Moroz is the 17-year-old prodigy from Moraga, California
who is reigning Women’s Kite World Champion. The 2016 Rolex US Yachtswoman of the Year at 15, she skipped the dinghy bit and went straight into kiteboard racing at 13 and started foiling 12 months later. Nurtured under the wing of the Crissy Field (adjacent to St Francis YC) kitefoiling contingent, Daniela has already emerged as an early challenger for a future US Olympic slot. The four-day Hydrofoil Pro Tour stop in San Francisco was breezy
this year, with sustained winds in the mid to high-20s and gusts well into the 30s – probably 10-15kt higher than sailors expect in most major venues but a useful test of endurance and physical skills. St Francis squeezed 16 races into those four days including the long-distance SF Bay Challenge, a mini-marathon from the City Front down to the Berkeley Pier and back. A rough workout for aspiring Olympians, to be sure. In its short existence kitefoiling has advanced extraordinarily
quickly, riders and gear charging through an evolution from the days of downwind-only contraptions with riders’ heels locked into plastic boots, all mounted on a modified wakeboard with a makeshift foil bolted on. Today’s riders use ram-air traction kites that funnel wind through
the kites enabling very efficient windward progress. Upwind vectors in the 40° range are now possible with upwind speeds of 22-25kt for the more polished racers. Meanwhile, boards have developed into 4½ft of high-pressure-bonded carbon and aluminium (often using an autoclave) with just enough area to support the riders’ two feet and carry the long spar below which carries the magic foil.
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MARIA MUINA
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