Nicklas Dackhammer:
“We’ve just arrived from Risør In Norway, we did the M32 Scandinavian Series there, so feel pretty warmed up and this was just continuing to do what we did last week. Short courses, little bit different conditions here than we’re used to, with the choppy waves. We’re more used to the west coast of Sweden, where it’s a little bit more stable sea breeze and when we sail the Series we’re always inside the cities, this was more open water. (So, in terms of these events) We’re more used to what we’ll see later in the week in the city (on the Neva River from Friday). But it was really fun out there today and we started out really well with a first place. We definitely didn’t lose it today. You can’t win the regatta on the first day but you can definitely lose it. We’re looking forward to tomorrow. We had the same feeling as them (Ian Williams/GAC Pindar), we were always gaining places, even if we had OCS starts and were at the back of the pack, we managed to climb positions all the time and I think that’s key when you’ve got only 6 boats, to try to eliminate the last places.”
Jonas Warrer:
“I don’t if we were too (excited) to begin with, because we had two false starts, two OCS, so we had to wait at the back of the fleet. But it was nice to see when we got going, we had really good handling. It’s a different game in these small courses because you don’t really go full speed, the way I would sail the boat on a bigger course. You always have to find the right mode, and sometimes we got that wrong, but in general we had good speed and we won the last race, which showed us that we beat the good guys out there.
It’s a really tactical game with short course boundaries. Get the number of tacks right, not too many, and that’s decided at the bottom gate – whether you have two or three tacks and that can have a big influence. The wind was fairly stable out there, so it’s all about the start and then positioning yourself.”