The morning after the night before had dawned at the PuntAla venue on the delightful Tuscan coast. The region had been due to get a little spot of weather the previous evening. And by little spot, I mean a massive slow-moving thunderstorm accompanied by biblical rain levels that found every crack and gap in restaurant roofs and came under doors. But no lasting damage and the resort awoke to a few puddles, but as the place is built upon sand, the water had largely dissipated.
Two races were planned for the inaugural day of the A-Cat Worlds. The Sunday practice race had been cancelled due to this extreme weather warning, so the sailors were rather chomping at the bit. 11am arrived, the committee boats, along with the flotilla of flag bearing ribs, many festooned with large orange marker buoys, made their way from the yacht haven of Punta Ala marina, and steamed North to set up the twin courses. The Southerly one for the Classics, Northerly for the Open foilers. Arriving on station, the Race Officers then took stock.
The Golfo Di Follonica, the waters adjacent to the lovely sandy launching beaches, is bounded to the west by the Isle of Elba and is essentially a crescent shape. It tends to have a bit of a microclimate and as a result, can miss out on weather passing either side, but also have it’s own weather pattern within too. This morning, the latter had arrived, and a localised storm started on the western Elba side of the area. The wind was dropping although there was a swell from the west, coming in as a result of the previous few days storms, in the Med. We all waited, floating about like ducks, as the rainstorm slowly rotated clockwise around the bay. The heat was building as well, so our media boat, a 7m 300hp rib was getting bored and with the swell ,was a perfect recipe for seasickness, so we decided to blast back to the marina a couple of miles way and sit on the dock until it was ready to go and we knew we’d get an hour’s warning once the courses had been set, the same as the waiting fleet on the beaches.
The sky cleared, with wind finally started to fill in, and some 7 kts, the flags went up and the beaches sprang into action as more than 180 A-Cats launched into the turquoise sea. This correspondent had decided to cover the Classic fleet in the first race, then move on to the Open for the second course of this mouthwatering sailing dish. Before not too long, boats started to arrive at the race boats and proceeded to run about rather like puppies do when let outside in the morning. Many ran up to sniff the ends of the line, setting their TacTik devices as they did so.
The wind was slowly building, and it was looking rather more promising by the minute. For someone who is not in the know about sailing and watching from afar, a sail race start it is a weird spectacle. Lots of boats, in this case about 90 on so per fleet, all sailing about in different random directions, some stopped, others running about left and right. Then they suddenly all coalesce within a short moment, all point in the same direction, then whoosh, off they all go silently. Rather confusing for the onlooker, and in a fleet this size, somewhat confusing for the sailors too…
With the wind now at about 13kts, Mike Kranz, USA 007, nailed the pin of this huge fleet, but closely chased by last year’s runner up, Gustavo Doreste, ESP 72, and Andrew Landenberger, AUS 308. One can only imagine the thoughts going through the sailors’ heads at that moment. You look around and realise that this will be the largest fleet you will ever sail in. Nothing will ever come close to what you will be experiencing right now. That first beat will be in your memory forever.
At the top mark, as I’d had secretly hoped, it was the Polish sailor Jacek Noetzel , Exploder POL 1, rounding first. Jacek is the father of Polish A-Cat sailing and has moved over to the Classic from the Open fleet for various reasons. The building winds, swell and now a chop as well, are the conditions he is totally at home with back in Sopot on the Baltic. He was to remain in that position throughout the race. Chasing him was a pack led by Micky Todd, ESP 7, the expat Scotsman on his Scheuer G6, Landy, also on a Scheurer, Gustavo on his Exploder and Stefano Sirri, Exploder ITA 7. Then all shot off around the spreader mark on their downhill leg.
Next came another larger band of sailors, led by Emmanuel Le Chapelier, Exploder FRA 399 and again set off downwind. It was at that point that the wheels started to come off. The wind was slowly clicking up, as a sea breeze was added in. The water was chopped up from previous boats and the followers had to negotiate this as well. A couple of boats went over, from one boat, Ken Marshack, USA 192, was thrown into the water and became separated from it. Now, this is a bad thing. You will possibly have more that 2/3rds of the fleet yet to pass, and you are just a small, helmeted head bobbing in the water, although they can see your boat on its side, they might not see you some 20 meters upwind, even if you are still clutching your detached tiller extension, this makes a poor defensive weapon in those circumstances.
Hence, at this point, we decided to quickly swap our rib’s role from media to rescue. No other rescue boats were remotely close. Fortunately, Nicola is a man who knows how to drive his big rib properly and accurately, and I am part of the safety boat squad at Rutland SC. Not being remotely fluent in each other’s languages suddenly wasn’t much of an issue now. He accurately followed my directions and understood the rescue plan totally, and young Ken was quickly extracted from the water and placed back by his boat. The big engine was perfect for those conditions.
A quick scan around revealed a number of other boats had fallen over in the by now 18kt wind. Seeing a boat in the distance, about 1 mile off, and again, no rescue craft near, we decided to investigate that one. But suddenly we came upon a loan florescent green clad sailor in the water, just floating about. Turns out it was actually his boat that was rapidly flying off downwind towards Grosseto faster than an Optimist could sail. So another customer was scooped up and we reunited him with his boat also. On the way we passed a dismasted boat, with it’s sailor sat on top. It turned out to be Astrid Jenssons, and she, not realising our current ongoing rescue mission, demonstrated an impressive multilingual ability to swear like a docker in several European languages. We returned after dropping our cargo at his wayward boat, and organised her recovery, for which she was relieved and quickly stopped her industrial language after realising we had correctly prioritised events. She is usually really lovely off the water though BTW!
Back in our position near the downwind layline, by now the rest of the fleet was on their final legs, boats continued to fall over in the 20 kt breeze and choppy swell. After a couple more rescues and a recovery of a foiler who couldn’t get her starboard foil up, he heard further racing was cancelled on both courses. The top five Classics were Jacek Noetzel,POL1, Scott Anderson, AUS 31, Andrew Landenberger, AUS 308, Marco Radman ITA 55 and Emmanuel Le Chepaiiler, FRA 399.
Meanwhile, over on the Open foiling course, similar scenes were being re-enacted. However, over on the right of their course, there was a large amount of floating debris, stick, weed and the like, a result of that storm and the river outflows. This is said to have rendered that side unusable in the end. And again, it was a Sopot based sailor, the current champion Kuba Surowiec, POL 41, who was totally at home in those conditions, foiling both up and downwind. He was chased by Stevie Brewin, AUS 4 and Mischa Heemskerk, NED7, all sailors known to love that stuff. At the finish, Kuba got the bullet, Stevie second, Mischa third, with Darren Bundock and Ravi Parent just off the podium slots.
However, the real drama occurred after the racing, as sailors arrived back at the beach. There was a considerable amount of beach break by now and several sailors didn’t really know how to cope with landing in those conditions. A few boats collided at the beach as a result. This combined with a shortage of waterproof volunteers for the early landers, and meant that more than a dozen broke rudder winglets as their rudders dropped and were bashed on the bottom as the waves came in. The Sopot guys , familiar with those conditions, always carry extra bungee straps exactly for this eventuality, which keep their rudders secured up at hull bottom level. Hopefully many have been repaired now by the Exploder and Scheuer repair teams, and Robin Maeder, the SUI sailor and Scheuer team fixer was seen working into the small hours re-attaching broken winglets.
Thus ended a memorable day. Several sailors said they never sailed in those winds before but impressed themselves and now have a renewed confidence in their abilities. Most broken boats can and will get mended, as annoying as it is when it happens, but hopefully they can be back in action without delay, and no-one was injured either.
This event has arrived with a bang.
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