Nacra 17 Palma 2022: Foil Upwind Realm

Interesting comments from Lange on the new upwind foiling mode that Tita & Banti and other crews seem to be using it at more and more at Palma thanks to the new rake & differential rudder system. We saw a cell phone footage from this week sent by Argie Lucas Gonzalez Smith (still above), of Tita & Banti flying upwind, miles ahead the rest of the fleet.

Any N17 should have been training another foiling platform, Tita for instance sails Moth and other should address A Cat flights asap, as offered to Lange some months ago to use a friend’s D3 2020.

In the US Ravi Parent and Riley Gibbs are top A Cat sailors, Poand have Tymek Bendyk & Kuba Suroviec, all four have done Nacra 17 campaign, if the continue they will have an start advantage to this new upwind foil realm.
Time for Bundy, Brewin , Ashby also… ?

Clearly those not mastering upwind foil we be left behind badly, as it happens in the A Class right now. Great performance for the Nacra 17, maybe next cycle we will see a DS mainsail?

Below new published by Trofeo Princesa Sofia media:

Upwind Foiling In The Nacra 17?

Ever since the Nacra 17 joined the Olympic circuit in 2013 at the start of the Rio 2016 quadrennium, this 17ft catamaran has challenged the sailors like never before. This was the first Mixed class that brought women and men sailing together in a fleet for the first time. Ever since we’ve seen different combinations of male/female and female/male teams perform at the highest level.

Meanwhile the technical advances have moved on apace, and this week at the 51 Trofeo Princesa Sofia Mallorca the Nacra 17 fleet is getting to grips with the latest development. Whereas the rudder rakes had to be set in place before the race, now in the post Tokyo 2020 era it’s possible to adjust the rudder rakes while racing. Teams are rigging control systems to allow movement of the rudder rakes, and crucially the elevator angle of attack, so they can move the rudders in parallel or even differentially while racing.

Where the last Olympic cycle was all about mastering the on-the-edge skill of downwind foiling, this new development could bring in a new era of upwind foiling. “It’s like sailing a new boat,” says the Rio 2016 Olympic Champion, Santiago Lange from Argentina. Getting used to sailing with his new crew, former 49erFX helm Victoria Travascio, is a big change in itself. But Lange admits he is also starting from ground zero with the adjustable rudder elevators. “Some teams have been practising trying to upwind foil for a few years, but for the lead-up to Tokyo I always said we’re not going to work on that because I didn’t believe it was going to be something we’d need to do in the Tokyo conditions, which proved to be the case.”

Now the three-time Olympic medallist is having to play catch-up with those who have been putting in the practice with the new equipment. Paul Kohlhoff and Alica Stuhlemmer, the Olympic bronze medallists from Germany, have experimented with occasional bursts of upwind foiling in the past and it will be interesting to see if that experience puts them ahead of the pack this week.

Will we ever see a foiling tack in a Nacra 17? It was the holy grail for other foiling classes such as the International Moth and the America’s Cup and SailGP boats of recent years. “If anyone manages a foiling tack, it probably won’t be us,” laughs John Gimson who with Anna Burnet won Olympic silver for Great Britain last year. Burnet says it’s a gamechanger for the fleet. “There’s a lot to learn and we need to learn it as quickly as possible.”

The other foiling classes in the new Olympic line-up – the Formula Kite and the iQFOiL windsurfers – are finding competitive athlete weights are on the increase as they try to cope with the huge power generated from foiling at high speed. However reigning Olympic Champion in the Nacra 17, Italy’s Ruggero Tita, has lost a bit of weight since winning gold in Tokyo last year. “I think the weights will come down slightly because we can generate more righting moment from using the windward rudder elevator.” Tita refers to the differential adjustment of the rudder elevators which is now possible for the first time. Like the big spoilers on the back of Formula One cars which help them to grip the road around tight corners, the Nacra sailors can now use their windward rudder elevators to generate downforce and make the foiling catamarans faster than ever.

—