RS FEVA WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS
The end of last month saw the RS FEVA Worlds in Germany at which Royal Torbay Yacht Club (RTYC) was represented by four boats. Dan and Finn Armstrong, the current British National champions, came 2nd in the world, Jess and Caitlin came 19th. The other two RTYC boats with Juila, Lauren, Tom and Luke also performed excellently and have really developed this season with a strong performance at the Worlds. Well done to all of those who competed.
To give you a feel of the occasion at the worlds Jess and Caitlin have shared their RS Feva World blog with us:
Jess and Caitlin “RS Feva 2508” world championship blog
Thursday 16th, Friday 17th Training
Travemuende Woche – great location for a Worlds event alongside 505s, Musto Skiffs, J70’s and lots more boats.
Good to have squad together for the last training of the year. Great sailing – lots of sun and wind and coaching from both Dave and Chris Taylor!! One to one coaching from Chris doing trigger starts – finally got it.
Saturday 18th
Racing against CNS and Burnham Squad – won the last race – great for our confidence!
Sunday 19th Practice Races
Rain and no wind! Frustrating racing – keep getting squeezed out on starts…
The Opening Ceremony was full of red, white and blue as lots of GBR sailors dressed up in union jacks. All nations carried flags from Feva Camp to main Travemuende Woche Stage. A great and exciting atmosphere to start the event.
Monday 20th Day 1 qualifiers
Started off with 10 knots of wind. We have all been flighted – a lovely purple ribbon for us, but we seem to be in a flight with most of the top sailors! Great days racing 8th, 10th in first two races having been 3rd round top mark on second race – great to be near the front! Terrible start on race 3, rounding top mark in 32nd place… but then great down wind, 16th at top mark, then finishing 10th. What a relief! Finished the day in 16th place and second girl team!
Tuesday 21st Day 2 qualifiers
Starting with a wet morning, the sun quickly brightened the day up and we launched – anxious to get on the water. Everyone was re-flighted and we were in flight green, unfortunately we had another difficult fleet. The wind was moderate, with giant gusts. Once again we saved a terrible start, rounding the windward mark in 40th, and finishing in 6th. The wind picked up and we ended with an 18th and a 15th, this put us down to 27th overall. However this meant Gold fleet which was a massive relief. The day was finished with the nations cup (the Lithuanians won) and a party on the big square-rigger called Passat.
Wednesday 22nd Day 1 final series
The racing was programmed to be on the media course so cameras were fitted to a few boats and there were ribs with big cameras, ready to film some footage to go onto the big screen by the harbour. Although this was all very exciting the course was under a cliff and it was an offshore breeze so there was no wind and we waited for hours on shore. The wind finally kicked in and settled down enough to race in. However the cliffs made the wind very shifty with a big hole at mark 1, and we had a shocking race: 41st. The next race had a one tack beat in which our name was up on the big screen showing us as first for 10 mins. We rounded the lee-ward mark in 10th and unfortunately on the last downwind we had to avoid a silver fleet boat, we crossed the finish line in 21st. Luckily we didn’t move down the leader board as lots of people had at least one bad race that day because of the tricky conditions.
Thursday 23th Day 2 final series
Light wind meant a short wait on shore. We had a second row start… but luckily we were at the right end of line and rounded the windward mark in 4th, we lost a couple of places on the run but caught it back up and finished 3rd. In the next race we finished 18th after which we had to wait as the wind had gone, when it finally filled in they abandoned it!!!
Thursday 24th Day 3 final series
Sitting in 20th overall and 3rd girls we were hoping that the wind wouldn’t kick in but it did… In the first race we were buried all the way upwind luckily we caught up to 22nd. The last race had a general recall on a black flag so lots of sailors were sent in early. My back started hurting after tweaking it the day before because of this we finished in 41st.
Prize Giving
We ended 19th overall. It was an emotional afternoon as we wouldn’t see some of our friends in quite a long time as they were all moving onto 29ers. Our coach, Dave Hivey won’t be coaching us next year, we will miss him but we look forward to a new coach. GBR filled the podiums and we took two spots, 2nd juniors and 3rd girls.