Australia has secured a bronze medal at the Nacra 17 World Championships in Auckland, despite Jason Waterhouse and Lisa Darmanin finishing last in the medal race.

The team had done enough earlier in the day with an eighth and a third in the last two gold fleet races giving themselves enough of a buffer over the fourth-place team that they were assured of a podium finish.

"The medal race wasn’t our best race,” said Lisa. "It was pretty windy, pretty choppy, quite shifty and we were under a big volcano. So it was tricky and we kind of got it wrong unfortunately. Then we just threw the dice a few times to see if we could get back in the game.”

Jason referred to the fleet as being “super hot” with nobody dominating and reiterating that they were going for gold. ”We went into the medal race with an opportunity to win which was what we set as our goal at the beginning of this week. We had nothing to lose – couldn’t lose the bronze - so we thought we’d go high risk and unfortunately it didn’t pay off. It wasn’t the result we wanted but in another way it’s exactly the result we needed this week so we’re very happy with a bronze medal and looking forward to Geelong.”

Lisa added: “We are happy with our speed. We made huge improvements around the racetrack here. There’s a few boat handling things we can definitely improve on and just some basic racing,” 

The Olympic silver medallists are now turning their attention to the 2020 World Championships at the Royal Geelong Yacht Club in February.

“We’ll head down to Geelong early to play with everyone who’s down in the southern hemisphere.” Darmanin noted. “We definitely want to go two better.  It’s all eyes on Tokyo really, so we want to keep learning as many lessons as we can.”

The bronze medal was the only bright spot for Australia at these champs with Jason and Lisa the sole Aussie representatives in the medal races. Class rivals Nathan and Haylee Outteridge failed to progress from the gold fleet racing, ending up in 13th place.

“We didn’t sail to the level we needed to,” said Nathan. “It’s always a tough old way to end an event but we identified some issues that we had. We knew there were some weaknesses in our programme that got highlighted in the finals and that’s life.”

He concluded on a philosophical note: “Sometimes you need a result like this to really shake you and get yourself sorted.”

Despite being T-boned by the Danish crew yesterday, brothers Will and Sam Phillips bounced back to finish as top Aussies in the 49er.

“It’s just been wonderful being able to measure ourselves against all the other 49ers, said Will. “Everyone is continuously improving and there are some components with our speed that are quite good and we need to figure out some fleet racing-specific things which could really contribute to some lower scores.”

Now Geelong looms and the brothers have a plan. “We’ll try and keep the approach pretty similar really. The margins at the level we are trying to compete at seem to be quite small, so if we just make a few small changes I think they have the potential to make a large difference.”

The surprise package in the 49er for Australia were Jim Colley and Shaun Connor who performed beyond expectation – until the final day where they slipped from 12th to 20th.

“It is hard to finish such a well sailed regatta on such a challenging day,” said Jim. “But we are really making sure we don’t forget or lose sight of how well we sailed. We are really stoked with our overall performance and how far we’ve come in the last 9 months. While we finished today on a challenging note it’s almost just made us hungrier going to Geelong. It’s a bit hard to swallow. But we are going to come back stronger for sure.”

For the Australian Sailing Team’s High Performance Director Iain Murray it has been a difficult week culminating in a lack of qualifiers for the medal races. “Disappointing obviously. I think we had high hopes a day or so ago of being in the 49ers and an outside chance in the FX.  That hasn’t materialised so there’s some disappointment there,” said Murray.

“Clearly we are not consistent enough across all wind ranges which is what you’ve got to be in these multiple-race events. When you are holding 15,16 races and only dropping one, it’s all very well having the good ones but you can’t have the bad ones."

Consistent was word of the week in Auckland, the numbers telling the story.

Murray again: “If you looked at most of the classes they are very high scoring so a 5th in every race would probably win the regatta. That’s called consistency.”

Murray is hoping for an improved showing in Geelong. “Geelong will be another set of conditions and it’s up to the good guys to adapt and generally they do.” 

Australian Sailing Team (AST), Australian Sailing Squad (ASS) and other Australian (AUS) entries:

49er (88 boats)

Gold Fleet
15th Will Phillips and Sam Phillips (AST) – 2,7,2,9, 10 ,8,11,11,7,21,2,17,21,18,17,10 (172)
20th Jim Colley and Shaun Connor (AUS) – 10,6,7,4,14,13,1,3,12,5,15,11,16,23,20 (177)
24th David Gilmour and Lachy Gilmour (ASS) – 20,10,8,8,3,6,15,8,14,11,13,20,9,22,22,9 (193)

Silver Fleet
29th Tom Needham and Joel Turner (ASS) - 14,14,6,18,1,7,15,18,8,31, (BFD)1,3,9 (164)
30th James Grogan and Max Paul (AUS) – 13,8,4,1,11,13,22,20,15,4,12,7,18,11,6 (164)
52nd David O’Connor and Fang Warren (AUS) - 24,17,20,2,19,25,20,19,2,18,22,15,6,16, 29, (DNF) (255)

Bronze Fleet
58th Kurt Hansen and Simon Hoffman (ASS) – 12,13,15,18,19,17,21,20,1,1,2,14,1,6,17 (176)
66th Oliver Manton and Jack Lloyd (AUS) – 17,23,22,22,16,9,21,20,15,6,6,21,20,10,10 (236)
71st John Cooley and Thomas Cunich (AUS) – 19,20,21,17,14,25,11,24,14,4,21,16,(BFD),27 (272)

49erFX (61 boats)

Silver Fleet
26th Amelia Stabback and Caitlin Elks (ASS) – 15,6,3,13,21,7,2,11,8,6,3,12,11 (140)
35th  Tess Lloyd and Jaime Ryan (ASS) – 24,17,14,15,26,20,4,22,15,6,11,23,2,1(200)
38th Tessa Parkinson and Ella Clark (AUS) –21,16,11,3,18,23,18,18,4,24,20,6,6,(DNC) (217)
43th Natasha Bryant and Annie Wilmot (ASS) – 20,5,21,12,22,8,18,15,(BFD)913,22,3 (DNC) (228)
50th Laura Harding and Laura Thomson (AUS) – 29,29,26,26,12,23,20,6,9,27,31,17,18,15 (287)
59th Chloe Fisher and Eleanor Grimshaw (AUS) – 28,17,25,26,28,29,29,18,27,31,29,30,(DNC) (379) 

Nacra17 (52 boats) 

Gold Fleet
3rd  Jason Waterhouse and Lisa Darmanin (AST) – 6,13,9,3,4,1,4,4,4,1,13,8,2,8,3,10 (103)
13th  Nathan and Haylee Outteridge (AST) – 3,5,3,6,3,2,1,24,15,13,5,14,16,10,16 (136)

Silver Fleet
31st Paul Darmanin and Lucy Copeland (ASS) – 14,11,15,17,18,8,12 ,6,5,5,5,6,3,1, (RET) (DNC) (173)
46th Steve Brewin and Karma Randall (AUS) – 19,22,21,20,20,20,23,13,20,20,25,15,19,11,10 (278)
49th Emma Jones and Hugo Hamilton (AUS) – 25,20,23,25,23,17,22 ,11,22,17,22,23, 21,18,22 (311)
50th Jake Liddell and Rita Booth (AUS) – 24,21,25,24,25,24,12,23,22,19,24(334) 

2019 Hyundai 2019 Hyundai 49er, 49erFX, and Nacra 17 World Championships 
Royal Akarana Yacht Club, Auckland, New Zealand

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Photos: Matias Capizzano and Sailing Energy