First Nacra 17 adventure

Photo Credit: Roberto Vuilleumier/Vela Garda Trentino

By Gemma Jones, Skipper of Nacra 17 with Jason Saunders.

We didnt know what to expect when we left in mid March to Europe to sail the Nacra 17 for the first time. We didn't head off with a great start picking up the boat in Holland. We were planning on rigging the boat up and sailing in Holland but when we arrived it was freezing cold and dumping with snow so we said screw this lets get to Palma!

After about a week of straight boatwork all day everyday in Palma and some food poisioning (just casually) we were definitely ready to hit the water and the Nacra 17 exceeded expectations. The curved foils made it exciting downwind and it was a lot better than other cats i had sailed previously and we had a lots of boat handling practice to catch up on quickly before the Trofeo Princesa Sofia began.

We had heard rumours of people double trapezing downwind but didnt really realise that in a wind range of about 10-15 knots its faster to do so. I realised this in the practice race when the helms of the first 5 boats round the top mark in front and stayed on the wire. That was an interesting downwind where we did not make great gains on other boats.

We finished 20th in the Trofeo Princesa Sofia World Cup regatta after a few good races, a few plastic bags and even a t-shirt on the rudders and a lot of learning. This was a start and gave us a good list to work on before the next world cup event in Hyeres.

After the first 2 days of the regatta in Hyeres we started off very slowly and learnt what definitely isn't the right setting for light winds! We were very happy the next day when the wind came up and found some great pace which was very nice after being the slowest boat the previous 2 days. We had high winds for the rest of the regatta which suited us but unfortunately the spinnaker halyard coming undone 100 metres before the finish in one of the races stopped us from making the medal race and we missed out by one point finishing 12th.

Our next event was in the beautiful Lake Garda - Vela Trentino Olympic week - a EUROSAF event. Garda and us didn't get off to a great start after one morning finding our boat upside down and our mast bent 90 degrees. Overnight a freak wind gust blew our boat upside down and down the bank when luckily a security guard found it and with help pulled it up. The mast was unfixable but the hulls only suffered a few scratches. We were very lucky that Tomer (the other New Zealand crew travelling with us) let us use his mast for the regatta!

The Garda wind definitely didn't live up to expectations as it was raining the whole time and we didn't get to see the famous Ora wind that was meant to come in the afternoons. This did enable us to get our light wind speed sorted and we were in second place, one point behind the Austrians, before the medal race. With the new format the race committee were trialling in this regatta it meant that for the 6 boats that made it into the medal race, our points changed to our placing overall, so we were on 2 points. A breakage in the medal race meant we ended up finishing the regatta in 4th place. Needless to say we were not a fan of the new format.

After a bit of drama including Gemma losing a bag with her passport, laptop, boat documents and pretty much all the important stuff, a lot of driving and traffic we made it home to New Zealand and are happy with our Nacra 17 experience so far and are excited for our next trip competing in Kiel week in Germany and the Nacra 17 Worlds in Holland.