Etchells World Championship at Royal Brighton Yacht Club - Practice Race
by Nic Douglass 9 Jan 22:18 NZDT
10-14 January 2025
The Etchells World Championship 2025 kicks off with full force tomorrow following the practice race today. The first to cross the line was David Dunn, owner and skipper of Great White Hunter AUS1483 after a beautiful final work which he put down to his crew Bret Perry and Sandy Higgins.
"We've sailed quite a bit before and it's great getting the old team back. It's been a couple of years now and especially with Sandy [Higgins] having just won the 5o5 World Championship, it's really good. We all get on well and we sail well together and it's fun".
"I'm not sure if that's a good thing," he said of taking the gun in the practice race. "We were going to finish earlier, but we thought there's a bit of work to do with our pace and practice, so we used the race to do that".
On the weather for the regatta, Dunn said that the tough race track of today might just be a warm up.
"Looks pretty tricky all round from the north and into the south... so the timing's going to be important and as was said at the opening, it's a game of chess out there. It's not a Formula One track, so we're going to have to have our heads out of the boat".
Heads out of the boat, as they did today in the later part of the race to take the win.
"I'll doff my hat to Sandy on that one, on the last work especially, we got it going and he read it beautifully. Checkmate".
39 boats started the practice race out of the 46 entries, and with three boats OCS, despite their Race Sense warnings, and 16 retirements, 20 boats lasted the full distance.
Kelpie AUS882, skippered by Richard Smith with Toby Conn, Bentley Conn and Raf Heale was the first to round the first top mark, reading the tricky conditions the best.
"The polishing must have helped", said Smith. But he commented that it didn't help them at the bottom mark where they experienced a few tangles with their spinnaker.
"There is no pressure going into tomorrow now", he commented.
That won't be the case for all with multiple world champions across a variety of classes, Olympians, Olympic medallists, America's Cup sailors, SailGP sailors and numerous sailing heroes and legends throughout the fleet, as well as exceptionally well practiced teams at the peak of their performance.
The 46-strong-fleet is set for a 1300 local time (AEDT/GMT +11) start tomorrow, with two races scheduled. Conditions are likely to start in the North like today, with the Southerly due to start building from race time.
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