scott.projectsomewhere

Tradition dictates that I need to write another of these. I’ve put together one for the skiffs in 2008, 2007 and 2006, so I can’t really let 2009 pass without another wild stab in the dark.

TheDailySail.com has put together a nice story on the coming JJ which gives Tolstoy a run for his money in terms of length – perfect for the attention deprived Internet generation.

I’ll keep my tips considerably shorter.

As I see it, there are few contenders for the title at the end of the week. There’s been only a couple of boats who’ve won races during the season, and fewer still who’ve been able to stay at the front consistently.

1) The Spooners – Seve, Tom and Sam. They’ve got to be favourites coming into the regatta as reigning champions and recent winners of the National championship. That is not to say they’re going to have it easy. The team are in a new boat this year, but it seems as though the rest of the pack has caught up to the speed edge they had last time around. Despite plenty of time on the water with their coach, the guys haven’t had the assistance of former JJ Champions Fiat to help with their speed development. They’ve had some bad results through the year, and appear to be making some panicked decisions at key moments. The loss of the calm Rob Bell on the sheet has definitely had an impact on their strategy. They’ve sailed around it so far, but the JJ always seems to ratchet things up a notch. The guys must be feeling the pressure to perform from a team with a budget which is a whole order of magnitude larger than the next nearest competitor. That pressure may get through to them, but they’ve been here before.

2) Southern Cross – Euan, Aaron and Trent. They imploded on the startline last week when it counted, but I wouldn’t expect them to make the same mistake twice. They’re going very fast, they’ve got plenty of grunt where it counts, and they have collectively plenty of good results under their belts. I’d expect them to be taking the regatta to 7 all the way to the end. Hopefully we may finally get another JJ that is decided on the last race.

3) The Rag – John, me and Pete. We’ve shown pretty good form over the season so far, but with Pete recovering from injury our preparation into the final weeks has been limited. Without Pete we’re missing plenty of weight that is needed to make our new rig work, so here’s hoping he is back in form come next Friday. Otherwise we’re going to struggle. Putting together a team at the last minute is never ideal. More expectation management.

Some of the other boats that could put together a few surprises…

Project Racing – They’ve got plenty of cred, and given they’ve sailed the boat full time for the last 6 months, it’s time for it to start paying dividends. I think they’ll win races and get plenty of good places, but they might have just enough bad results to stay out of contention.

AppliancesOnline – Herman’s Pirate Ship goes fast and can win big when they go the right way. Unfortunately Herman likes to push the envelope just a little too far at times, and may come undone at some point over the week.

To be honest, I don’t think there’s many other teams that will win races.

Macquarie could do it on a good day. Smeg normally fires up about now. Pure Blond is about due for some glamour races. Active have our old rig working well.

Maybe the Kiwis are ready to take the trophy this time around? Maybe Howie can put or the other US teams can pull their borrowed boats onto the pace.

Or maybe not.

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Late change to the form guide, with Smeg stepping up in the rankings now they’ve added Hugh Stoddart as a permanent addition in the back of the boat. I don’t know exactly where to rank them yet, but they’ll be putting another boat into the equation through the week.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 9:27 am and is filed under 18' Skiff, Sailing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.