Qingdao gives a taste of what to expect during practice racing
The fleet of seven teams representing seven nations headed out into the open water outside Qingdao’s Fushan Bay today for practice racing ahead of the start of Act 2 tomorrow.
Thursday 27th April 2017
The fleet of seven teams representing seven nations headed out into the open water outside Qingdao’s Fushan Bay today for practice racing ahead of the start of Act 2 tomorrow.
The conditions look set to deliver a fantastic four days of racing and Race Director John Craig has high hopes for the event.
“All in all it was a good day on the water and amazing conditions for Qingdao; sunny, warm and windy,” he said. “Tomorrow is supposed to be the windiest of the four race days and then it will start to die a little bit but not a lot. It looks like we could get to Sunday with 12 knots gusting 15, so we’ll see where we end up but tomorrow should be exciting.
“You can tell who’s been in the boats a lot and who hasn’t. The biggest issue for the guys is how puffy it is and how shifty it is. Red Bull Sailing Team was really strong today, as was Alinghi and SAP Extreme Sailing Team had a couple of moments, Oman Air too – they were all up there. The younger teams struggle in these conditions and tomorrow looks like much of the same.”
Craig took the reins from his predecessor Phil Lawrence at the start of this season, making this his first time as the Series Race Director in this venue. “I’ve been to Qingdao before several times with World Sailing but not inside Fushan Bay ‘stadium’,” he said.
“I have been told it is challenging so I’m excited about that but tomorrow should be straight forward, we’re outside the breakwater, same breeze direction and we’ll try to bring it in a little bit closer to the wall for the spectators.
“We’ll be doing windward leeward courses and if it’s this windy we’ll be doing upwind starts, we won’t be doing any reaching starts. But still, it’s Qingdao and things can change really, really quickly as we know so the forecast that’s four days out could very well change.”
The practice racing gave the teams the chance to re-familiarise themselves with the boats after a six-week break, and the Omani team got its first taste of what Qingdao could deliver when they were caught by a gust and capsized.
“She got caught by a puff and a shift and basically the rudders came out of the water and she capsized,” Craig explained. “Everybody on board is fine, they got the boat upright and back in the harbour and it doesn’t look like there was too much damage other than a ripped mainsail. We had our safety team out there and all the other coach boats were out on the water so it was standard safety protocol for us.”
Team Oman Air skipper Phil Robertson said: “It was pretty puffy out there, and as we came out of a gybe we got caught by a big gust and over we went. Everyone is fine. It is part of the game.”
Robertson, who has not previously competed at the tricky venue in the GC32 catamaran, added: “We’re definitely going to try to not do that again, that’s for sure. We’ve got a few minor repairs to do today and then back in it tomorrow. We had some pretty nice starts today, we’re happy with how it went.”
Scoring racing starts tomorrow from 13:45 (UTC+8) and fans can watch from the Race Village for free. You can follow the racing through the live blog or sign up to our daily newsletter.
