Nacra F20 at Auckland: Macca’s report

3 Nacra F20 at Auckland report By Andrew MacPherson
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“Last week I flew to Auckland to set up 3 Nacra F20’s for an AC team, The idea is to use the boats as a training and testing platform for the team to get more adept at multihull sailing and the respective skills required.

I was assisted by the coach and two young match racing stars from NZ, the youngsters had already been match racing on F18’s in an effort to get up to speed with the new direction the AC is taking. The weather on the build day was pretty nasty, windy and raining… but by the next morning it had cleared up enough so we could take 2 boats out for a test run.

With a really light breeze forecast to die even more, we made the best of it while it lasted and had a good initial session with the guys getting used to the systems and how the boat felt. The coach and I sailed together and just as we were discussing the forecast of dying breeze… it did just that. So we made a call to the club and a rib came out to tow us in. I figured now was as good a time as any to show a little trick we learned with the boat under tow. We had both boats on different length lines and off we went, pretty soon I started to put the boards more and more down until the boat started to fly, and it really flies!! At one stage we only had 2ft at the back of the boat still touching the water, it’s a lot of fun but not something you should try at home…

Anyhow, the next day’s forecast looked much better so we ticked off a few of the jobs in the morning and went sailing in about 8-10kts breeze, You really couldn’t get the smile of the coach’s face all day. In fact when we were driving home he said his cheeks were sore from smiling all day!

It was really a magic day on the water, we were full power and able to set the boat up for high and low modes and did a lot of discussion and trials in changing modes and what feels right and whats not so good. Then as we were in the middle of sorting out some system tweaks we noticed the 45 was nearby, so like little school kids we thought it would be a good idea to check it out and see how fast we were.

Many of you have seen the video, but it was shot really at the end of our little lineup. We actually hung in there for a lot longer than I thought we would at one stage we even started moving forward a little bit but as you would expect from a boat more than twice the length it got through us and then as soon as they were bow forward we started to get effected by their breeze bubble and we fell in to leeward. For us it was very interesting to see that the angles and speed were not that different upwind. Sure the VMG on the 45 was better but the important thing is that the F20 is a relevant training tool. Particularly when you consider that we sailed the same angles downwind as the 45. But I have to say that the 45 was seriously fast downwind. I was shocked at the pace it had downhill.

On the final day we had an early start, partly because I had to fly out and also there was a cyclone approaching which was forecast to blow more than 45kts… So we made an early session in 25-30kts which was a real eye opener for the coach and upon returning after a solid but short sail we discovered that a lot of the team wanted to go sailing on the boats… but after checking the wind readings they changed plans and we packed to boats in preparation for the nasty weather.

So the first week of F20 sailing in Auckland went very well, the team are really happy with the boats and I suspect there will be some heated racing taking place over the next few weeks.”