Balancing the Ibuprofen and Shiraz

Skip Dieball, who won the 2015 Etchells World Championship, is hiking for Michael Goldfarb at the 2018 edition in Brisbane, Australia. Here Skip reports from the Pre-Worlds on October 14-16.

Every year the organizers of the Etchells Worlds try to set up a warm-up event commonly referred to as the Pre-Worlds. This is done for many reasons, namely to provide those that have packed their boats into containers with more sailing time than the standard week-long Worlds event while also getting more intel on the venue before the big show begins.

The Etchells Class finds some of the best places in the world for their Worlds venue, and if the Pre-Worlds taught us anything, it’s how the waters off of Brisbane will provide a challenging backdrop to determine the 2018 titlist. After this three day sampling, there’s still plenty to learn but we already see how the bottle of ibuprofen will have more takers than the fine Australian Shiraz.

Full-on breeze was the order for the first two days. Rain squalls of 25+ knots had all the competitors in asset-preservation mode. Some didn’t fair well….with broken rigs, holes in boats, and a few testing their man-overboard skills.

To say the conditions were tough, would be understating it. Slugging uphill in 4 to-5 foot chop across a 2+ mile beat, to then surf (and try not to submerge) back to the bottom, with the poor little rudder on the Etchells shouldering the 3- or 4-person teams as the primary tool to keep the boat under control.

But the last day had nearly everyone smiling. The sun finally came out after about a week behind the squally clouds. Moderate 5-15 knot breezes with challenging current against wind chop would test even the most gifted teams.

With the leaderboard littered with the elite from many of sailing’s best competitions, in the end it was 2000 Olympic gold medalist Tom King’s team from Australia putting together a fine series to take the Pre-Worlds over the legendary 1983 America’s Cup winning skipper John Bertrand

For the seven teams that traveled from the USA, this event proved to be a great warm-up and practice session. Many teams haven’t sailed together in a while and nearly all the boats haven’t been touched in weeks due to shipment….so getting everything and everyone sorted out was most important.

The Pre-Worlds saw Steve Benjamin, Michael Goldfarb, and Scott Kauffman finish 5, 6, 7 respectively while Jay Cross and Peter Duncan both had very good races, showing the USA contingent will be right there when the 95-boat Worlds is held October 22-27.

For now, we have three days of measurement, practice and relaxation to mend the physical and mental side will be just what is needed as the Worlds will once again be a marathon event.

Event details – Entry list – Facebook