Australians at Flying Dutchman Pre-Worlds regatta

12:34 PM Fri 31 Jul 2009 GMT

There is only one Australian team in Holland for the Worlds this year. Ed Cox and Peter Bevis have arrived to take delivery of their new Mader.Other Aussie FD sailors are having a year off or they have sent their boats to New York for 400th Anniversary of New Amsterdam Championships and the 4th Centennial New Netherlands Championships.

Ed Cox reports 'We arrived on Thursday with no idea when our new boat would arrive from Munich. So the first day was spent cruising around Amsterdam watching the world go by from a cafe and various pubs. In fact for ex-12 sailors we were remarkably well behaved (but that could have been jet lag).

On Friday we went to Medemblik by train, and by chance our boat suddenly arrived. It was cold and rainy most of the day (16 degrees), but the weather changed frequently with occasionally sunny period and storms. We had to run hide from the rain every hour and then back to boat work. The boat was excellently prepared and no real work required except mast tuning and shortening of a few ropes.

Saturday and Sunday was the Worlds Tune Up Regatta with 20-25 boats on boat days, mainly Dutch and German sailors. There were also a Mexican team and some others.

Saturday was very windy with 20-25 knots and large chop. Up wind you would drop off very short one metre waves and lots of shifty gusts. Not the ideal day for launching a new boat, but there was no choice for us so out we went.

A few boats with aluminum masts broke them in the mud capsizing at the gybe mark. After watching that we were very conservative and didn't push it.

We finished all three races, which were very long, three laps with an upwind finish, each race taking about 1-1.5 hours, so a solid 5 hours days sailing in lots of wind. Nothing broke on our boat and she seems very fast. We led to the first mark a few times, but slow at the corners getting used to the new boat.

Ultimately we finished fifth in the regatta, which we are happy with. The new Mader boat is excellent; reliable and very fast. It is just a matter of getting used to the different rope systems around the corners and remembering how to sail with bigger fleets.

The regatta was convincingly won by Enno Kramer in NED 32 from Bas van Der Pol in NED 26. We did not think either of them were faster than us, they just started more consistently and made less mistakes.

Klaas Tilstra in NED 4 was also sailing very well, and finished third. Harold Wijgers in NED 25 would have been very competitive overall with some good results, but he broke gear on Sunday and had to retire. Although he did retire immediately after we rolled him down the reach going into the bottom mark.

Killian Koning had a big spinnaker from a 505 on the boat on Sunday. He showed bursts of speed down hill at times, but did not finish well because he had an aluminum mast. General consensus is that the 505 spinnaker will not transfer straight across and will require some refinement to work well on an FD.

Today it is raining and there is no wind. So we did some grocery shopping, then boat fixing and now just having a quiet beer.

Tomorrow we will try and sail, or possibly do some site seeing. The worlds start on the weekend and result from the worlds are on www.sailfd.com and www.ryc-hollandia.org .

Likely entries are 95 boats from 15 countries with lots of competition for the pointy end of the fleet.

On the subject of FD rumours, there are two. The Romania worlds seem to be well prepared and they will happen.

The class sounds to be going well in Europe, Mader reported building seven boats this year and Bogiumul a few as well.

FD AUS 7
www.kzrvhollandia.nl/download.php?file=Z_kalenderClasses.117.strResults.Results%20FD.htm

by Ed Cox

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