The Australian Sailing Team (AST) have the Men’s and Women’s 470 crews at the Hempel World Cup Series in Miami, whilst other classes sail closer to home in championships being staged around Port Phillip in Melbourne.

After two days of racing, the Men’s crew of Mat Belcher and Will Ryan are presently sitting in fourth place overall in the 30 boat fleet. Drops are already including, so all their results so far are in the top ten, and a bullet (race win) today shows that the reigning World Champions are very much there to race.

Will Ryan commented, “The Windward/Leeward courses means the racing is really close, as without the reaching leg it means the chance for separation is much less. Today we had their traditional off the land breeze, which meant 30-degree shifts, so our heads were out of the boat a lot. It made it pretty challenging, and it was also up and down range a lot, from 14-20 knots, but there were patches of nothing, as well.”

What we saw were crews in the left and right corners of the course, but it was still all even when we came back together all even at the windward mark. The race win was great. We had two boats mixing it with us during Race Four, but they were OCS (under Black Flag), so we secured the win.”

“We are all well here, and it is great to be checking in with the fleet, although we would rather be back at home for Summer. The Europeans are in light gear here, and we are in thick wetsuits – go figure. Still, if we had not have come here then it would have been a six-month break, and that would not have been suitable. It has already been three months since we’ve raced, so it is nice to be out there, and see all our friends as well.”

Ryan added, “Tomorrow there is more left over from the recent cold front, so we’ll see how it goes. Our preparation is OK, and we’re in the mix. It is important to do the right things at this level. We got the tuning sorted out yesterday, and we are off now.”

“Overall, we are excited to race, and we’re making sure it is fun, which all helps to keep the competitive juices flowing. It is an Olympic year, so it is certainly game on. Anything can happen in sport. Mat sets the level - he is just so keen and it spurs me on. You just love it once you are out there in the thick of it. We still very much like what we do, and for the main part it is all about just proving yourself to yourself, and not being too concerned with outside influences.”

“We are happy with our campaign and what we are doing to get us to our goal”, said Ryan in conclusion.

Our AST 470 Women’s crew of Nia Jerwood and Monique de Vries are currently in 12^th position, but today a third place in the first race shows that they are very much aware of what they can achieve. They have Ruslana Taran, who is effectively their overseas coach, looking after them. Taran is very much considered a genius, has quite the impressive resume of results herself, and is also an understudy of the remarkable Victor Kovalenko who coaches our Men’s crew.

For’ard Hand, Monique de Vries said after racing, “Today was a little tricky with a reasonably strong offshore wind that made it quite shifty. We had a good first race, but the pressure changes made racing quite interesting. In the second race the breeze filled in a little more and it became more of a shift game. We ended up on the wrong side of a few shifts and had trouble getting back from that.”

Australian Sailing Team results at the Sailing World Cup, Miami:

Men’s 470 (30 boats)
4^th: Mat Belcher and Will Ryan 15, 4, 6, 1 - 15 points

Women’s 470 (16 boats)
12^th: Nia Jerwood and Monique de Vries 11, (12), 3, 10 – 24 points