Dun Laoghaire's Saskia Tidey of the Royal Irish Yacht Club has moved to the top of the 49erFX women’s fleet on day two of the Lanzarote International Regatta on the Canary Islands.
Tidey, who sails with Freya Black for Great Britain due to a lack of skiff opportunities in Ireland, held their nerve in big seas to move to the top of the 49erFX women’s fleet at the Lanzarote International Regatta on the Canary Islands.
Even launching the 49erFX fleet had its hairy moments; the wind was gusting hard through Marina Rubicon as the women launched their frisky, disobedient skiffs onto the water. The racing was a war of attrition with multiple nosedives, pitchpoles and capsizes in the huge, unforgiving swell.
Double Olympian Saskia Tidey (IRL and GBR): “Defo the Biggest Wave of My Life!”
Where the 470s travel at more or less wave speed a lot of the time, the 49erFX always wants to overtake the wave, and that’s where the trouble begins. Learning how to throttle back is sometimes more important than putting your foot to the floor.
Emerging unscathed and on top of the leaderboard were the still quite new pairing of Freya Black and Saskia Tidey (GBR). While Tidey has been to the past two Olympic Games (for Ireland in Rio 2016) in the 49erFX, Black is barely a year in this demanding class, which made her mastery of today’s conditions all the more impressive.
Tidey was still buzzing from a big day out. “Pretty full on, but fun, massive waves,” she grinned. “Thankfully, we kept a dry mast for all three races, plenty of points where we were nearly going over, but Freya did a great job of keeping the stick in the sky.
“To be honest,” continued Tidey, “I think I saw two of the biggest waves in my career today. Bigger than in Tokyo, but we survived them and that’s all that matters. A lot of time I was head in the boat, trying to look after ourselves and keeping out of trouble, so I’m only just realising now how much of a big day it’s been with breakage and injury. It’s an epic venue and Marina Rubicon are putting on such a great show here, we’re really enjoying it.”
Almost as consistent as the British scores of 2,4,1 were the Italians, Jana Germani & Georgia Bertuzzi (ITA) who won the first two heats and were sixth in the last. However their mast tip snapped soon after the end of the last race. “We haven’t had a moment to think about what we did just now,” said Germani as she and Bertuzzi rushed to prepare a new mast in case the fleet was sent out for an afternoon session. “We were sailing in after the races and a fitting at the top of the mast broke so we need to hurry to get ready again.”
The Italians have moved to second overall with Steph Roble & Maggie Shea (USA) posting a solid day to climb to third place, just ahead of yesterday’s leaders, Olympic Champions Martine Grael & Kahena Kunze (BRA) who struggled today.
The forecast for Sunday and the coming days is looking very good. Racing starts at 1100 hours on Sunday morning.
Results here