MASTERS NEWS - World Championships 2021 by Neil Peters (aka Stick Daring)

Barcelona has always held a fond place in my heart.

I spent six Finntastic months living there in 1991 competing in the Olympic trials. I was never a serious contender, but had a few moments of glory. So after a flawless Easyjet flight, aside from a little entry issue, due to Spanish customs and something to do with covid forms, an hour later and a lot of appalling Spanish, all was well.  After this delay, I decided to save the stress and catch a cab, accepting the forty euro penalty versus the ten euro public transport cost. I needed to make a rendezvous time with the yacht owners, where I would be living on during the regatta.

Staying in the harbour for the week seemed ideal and worked out cheaper than a featureless hotel room. Quite romantic I thought!

When I climbed into the back of the taxi, I breathed a welcome sigh of relief, believing my journey was nearly over. It wasn’t until we had circled around the harbour three times that it occurred to me that perhaps we were in the wrong place. A call to the owners of the yacht confirmed indeed we were at the wrong harbour. The Barcelona International Sailing centre (BISC) was located at a new harbour in Port Forum many miles further out of town. 

However, a new issue arose at this point. Having made contact with the yacht owners they explained I was expected tomorrow, and the boat wasn’t available tonight. It was 8pm local time. A new dilemma. The taxi driver was all for unloading me in the middle of the Olympic harbour miles from nowhere. I resisted his overtures and then directed him to drive me to BISC  at the other harbour. Thinking that at least there would be an ILCA waiting for me there and, at worst, I could always bed down under the cover if I had nowhere else to stay. He punched in a postcode for the Sailing Centre I had hurriedly googled in the back of the cab. Twenty minutes later we arrived at the location.

A pitch black concrete promenade buried in the middle of the Port Forum harbour complex with nothing jumping out looking obviously sailing centre shaped. Mr Taxi definitely wanted shot of me as the meter ticked over 50 euros and again suggested I get out. A call to the centre prolonged his agony and after passing the phone back and forth several times to the driver and the sailing centre receptionist we arrived at a Fort Knox style barricade, which quite miraculously opened as we pulled up. I had made it. Unloading my bags I then passed nearly all the euros in my wallet to the cabby and wondered what to do next. 

As I stood in front of the building, a host of blue flashing lights from the local Policia descended on me. Maybe my covid papers weren’t any good after all. I needn’t have worried. They were arriving to deal with a Vodka fuelled fight which had broken out between the Olympic sailors from the seniors worlds, which had just finished that day. Apparently the Russian and Croatian sailors had a clash and the Russians wanted the organisers to take action. It was a useful diversion and I slipped into the building to enquire if I could rent a room for the night. No problem! Fifteen minutes later I was drinking coffee and eating pasta in the restaurant. The Policia stayed long into the night as Russian coaches huffed and puffed backwards and forwards looking outraged.

The World ILCA Masters was an event, which had been delayed and pushed back in the calendar to November due to covid.

Sailing in Barcelona during this month is about the worst time of year you could possibly pick for an event at this venue. The water temperature is 18 degrees and the air temperature at midday; the scheduled race times is only slightly less. 5 knots is a windy day at this time of year unless you get out of bed at 6am. It took a few days for the race officers to have the confidence to do this. 

The seniors had been starting racing at 9am every day the previous week to catch the cold dense Katabatic winds being sucked down off the freezing mountains surrounding Barcelona. Winds which whipped up large waves and disappeared almost precisely every day at midday  as the sun finally cooked them.

Mike Hicks and I checking over the charter boats…

The practice race was sailed in 2 knots at midday, the first official days racing was a little more and a little less at times. Day three was even less resulting in no racing for the Ilca 7 fleet, but only because the race officer was facing a full scale on the water revolt from competitors when he dummied raising the first warning signal. We drifted two hours back home. 

Day 4 and the regatta proper started with first start at the unearthly hour of 9am. A 6am rise in pitch black and near zero air temperatures. But plenty of wind. Serraphin, the Portuguese master sailor won the event for me as he ventured out in his Bermuda shorts, t-shirt and a life jacket. He had slightly more onboard ballast than most, I on the other hand had full winter gear including my round Britain woolly hat.  

Racing was awesome. Large rolling waves, shifty, tricky flicky flacky wind but good pressure; maximum hiking, mostly blowing off the land. There were many high scores. The best sailors somehow kept plugging away and posting scoring results though at the end of day 4 some 35% of the ILCA 7 GM fleet were carrying a penalty, either Yellow flag, Black Flag, or DSQ. The Austrian Christoph Marsano completely blew his event with a UFD(42) and BFD in the first third of the event. He demonstrated staggeringly consistent speed, posting seven top four finishes, which coupled with his other low digit results probably would have been enough to claim victory. Other notable performances were coming from Robert Hallawell  USA, who kept his nose clean and was consistently at the sharp end. Nick Harrison flying the GBR flag was still in with an outside chance of a medal going into the final days racing.

Results from the first three days ultimately made his task too great but he finished a very creditable 6 place. In the GGM fleet Mike Hicks and Tim Law were right at the pointy end of the fleet for the entire series, with Tim winning three races. A black flag possibly cost him second place overall, finishing 3rd behind two former Olympic Gold medal Finn sailors Jose Luis Doreste (ESP)and Wolfgang Gerz (GER) respectively.

Unusually, there was no representation for GBR in the Masters, and the Apprentice Masters divisions with Roger O Gorman choosing IRL as his flag. I made up the last of only four GBR representatives in the ILCA 7 fleet. My event was over on day one after contracting a bout of food poisoning which lasted for the first four days. I made it onto the water, but my focus was more concentrated on preventing bodily movements between tacks. Something I felt I had mastered quite well by day 4. I wasn’t aided much by the high gloss polished interiors of the charter boats, which had been buffed within an inch of their lives; making them treacherously slippery. Several other competitors experienced similar issues with one falling over quite badly and fracturing his ribs. I successfully avoided damaging any ribs but did build a high score of capsizes in the first three days, rolling around in no wind, 6 capsizes in three races to be precise, half as many as when I sailed around the entire UK.  A conservative approach to the  last two thirds of the regatta pulled me up from nearly last after 4 days to mid fleet and pleasingly no penalty points.

After a difficult start, the race management team pulled a rabbit out of the hat and ran a  world class series. We completed all 12 of the scheduled races, 8 of these in great sailing conditions. The race officer, Jordie, took some really unpopular decisions to get the event completed. Getting a significant amount of stick from several of the visiting sailors for the ungodly early starts. Notably the Italian sailors  sending a message stating 

“ We are Masters, this is our holiday”. 

Fortunately this objection fell on deaf ears. After the initial shock of rolling out of bed at 6am it actually proved to be a really great plan, as we had the best of both worlds. Great sailing in the morning in breeze and lovely lazy afternoons relaxing in the sun. Barcelona.