The trip to A Coruna, Spain for the 2017 Snipe Worlds was quite the adventure. It stared with cancelled flights, lost luggage, gear and sails as well as a missed connection. We ended up arriving a day late to the event which eliminated our only full practice day. This was quite unfortunate as the charter boat needed a ton of work to be ready, some of which was not discovered until after the first day of racing. For the first time ever, the Worlds was broken up into Silver and Gold fleets which was disappointing. 85 Snipes on one line is bold but not that big of a deal for most venues. The first two days had 5 qualifying races, 3 on day one and two on day two, mostly in big breeze. Day one was tough as we had no ability to point, had not had enough throw in the jib halyard due to some poor engineering and had not enough time in the new boat. Four hours working on the boat in the evening of Day 1 addressed many of our bigger issues and Day 2 was more enjoyable. We qualified for Silver and had 6 more races over the next three days. Your place from the qualifiers was pulled into the finals and was counted as your first race and was not discardable.
The final 6 races were sailed in more breeze, more waves, and 30-40 degree shifts. Race one was relatively light, and I rounded the first Mark in 4th with nearly all the Silver fleet American sailors clustered in the top ten. Over the next five legs we fell back to 13 when we missed a tiny shift. The leader was 100 yards from the finish when the race was abandoned. Then it really started to blow. That would have been my best race of the regatta and a great start. However, that is yacht racing.
We ended up catching a U Flag in the second running of race #1 which didn’t help our efforts much at all. It was classic international starting line sighting where they got a few guys on U flag to make a point and let everyone else go. If they got five of the 25 boats that were over, I would be surprised.
The rest of the regatta was pretty brutal. More wind, more waves and more shifts. Almost the entire regatta was sailed as triangles which is a good indicator that it was pretty windy. We were very pleased to have kept the boat underneath us for the entire regatta and to have finished every race. As you can see from the scores, Randy and Steve both had DNCs and George actually flipped and finished valiantly in one of the crazier races.
Even with great coaching and good preparation, the venue proved to be confounding to many of the US Sailors. It was like sailing on a lake and the ocean at the same time. 30 degree shifts from either side with no clear indicator outside of some cloud formations that all looked the same to me. It was really quite an eye-opener and a true educational experience. I am still improving in my Snipe sailing after a 20 year hiatus. This regatta put me forward about 3 years in one week of sailing. The ENTIRE US team was super supportive and helped us in any way they could.
In hindsight, I would do some things differently. We had to cut some corners to afford the event since I had to pay all my crew’s expense in addition to my own. We really should have gotten to the venue about a week earlier. A Coruna is a little like Fremantle and the Fremantle Doctor. Zero wind until 1PM and then 18 -25 until dark. I tracked the average wind velocity for months from afar only to learn that it was not a fair representation of the wind we would see on the course. It was so light for half of every day that the second half, windy portion got cancelled out in the average windspeed reporting. I saw 6-10 average which would have been GLORIOUS for us. Big mistake. We did a ton of physical prep and came in even lighter than we had planned. We sailed the regatta at about 300 lb when 330-340 lb would have been ideal. As you know the Snipe only goes forward if you hike really hard. Eventually, the big kids separated in the breeze. All the Americans had a tough regatta in one way or another. I think it is clear that we are light air sailors for the most part, especially in Snipes. The one light air almost-race showed that the entire America team had jets, just not in the conditions we ended up sailing. It never got light… ever.