Under the Florida sun

Iain Percy updates thedailysail on his progress heading towards the Bacardi Cup

If you are a Star sailor then the place to be at the moment, particularly if you are heading for Athens in August, is Miami where the class' Bacardi Cup kicks off on 3 March.

Among the elite Star sailors training out of the US Sailing centre next door to Coconut Grove, are Britain's Skandia-sponsored contenders Iain Percy and Steve Mitchell, enjoying their third winter under the Florida sun.

"We’re training pretty full on and it has been going quite well recently," Percy told thedailysail this week. "We’ve made some good in-roads, slightly changing the philosophy on the training a little bit. We’ve had a bit of an edge in 10 knots plus but we’re always developing equipment and you tend to get a little bit lazy and you try not to go too hard on yourself, but we thought ‘bugger it’ - we’ll go for it at full pace and go really hard by doing shorter sessions in the breeze and do longer sessions in the light where we have made the improvements. And it is paying off. So it has been a good couple of weeks."

With the Bacardi Cup looming followed by US selection trials for the Star on 18-29 March, the cream of the American fleet is regularly out on the water. "Every day there are 20 boats out - you’ve got Cayard, Reyolds, Freddie [Loof], Xavier [Rohart]. We’re doing mini races with seven boats and five are ex-world champions. It is funny how it works: normally in these mini races there are always a few guys who don’t contest for the best position on the start line - suddenly to have all those people and the mini races become a complete mess! Everyone goes for the port end of the line and invariably there are a load of crashes."

Percy reckons that among the Americans are five of the top 15 Star sailors in the world, with Cayard and Reynolds both top five in his personal ranking. Aside from this Percy also rates Howie Schiebler, who is less well known outside of the Star fleet. "With the Americans there are a lot of guys who are in contention, who can do it if they have a good regatta. They have a lot of depth."

To get to the Games in the US team, it is a winner-takes-all showdown in the selection trials. Obviously from the British perspective it would be advantageous if the winner were someone other than one of the top players. Percy feels that in the flukey conditions found in Miami anything is possible. This may be why the British Star duo finished 14th at the recent Rolex Olympic Classes Regatta - a disappointing result for the former World Champions and potential podium placers.

"It was typical Miami winter - very light and flukey," explains Percy. "The really hard thing about the Star is that in light winds everyone goes the same speed really, but if you get a little puff you go 100 times faster. We had a 21 and a 42 on the last day but everyone had a bad day, but our big mistake was that we got an OCS on a 15 knot day which should have been a top five for us and that’s where we can’t afford to make a mistake. It's swings and roundabouts in the light for everyone in the big fleet. It is a bit different in the smaller Olympic-sized fleets, the manoeuvres, etc but in the big fleet it is a bit of a dice throw. You need to not make mistakes in the conditions where you can dominate. If we’ve hadn’t done that we would have won the regatta. Obviously it is typical ‘what if’..." He adds that the recent US Olympic trials (for classes other than the Star) were also typical of Miami conditions - where it was possible to go racing in less than 5 knots of breeze with slight tide...

Aside from the Athens selection for the US team, Percy says that there has been a big change in the class regarding crew weights. "People are all very in shape now. We certainly had a little bit to do with that. We were cited as being physically better in the boat along with Freddie [Loof] and Xavier [Rohart] and some of the other Finn sailors and people have hurriedly got to the gym and got themselves into the position where they can do that now."

Back in the bad old days the Star was slightly the gentlemen's Olympic class and you could get away with being portly and gout-ridden. "There was an element of that," says Percy. "Without the weight rule it was always better to be fat and heavy, with the crew weight over the side they were in a fairly comfortable position and if you were 150kg then the boat when pretty damned quick and fat was definitely fast. But now there is the weight rule and I guess we were one of the first people to realise the significance of the change and how you would have to sail the boat. Now everyone has gone to that."

Mitchell and Percy are both aiming at the 100kg ideal weight and Percy says they are trying to bulk up a bit. "I may be out a bit further when I’m hiking, but it is a lot harder. Luckily my legs have done a few years of hiking they are used to doing that. They can take a few windy beats..."

At present Percy and Mitchell don't have a coach with them, although this is to change shortly. "We’ve got Paul Hobson from North Sails coming out in a couple of days to carry on with the sail development and David Howlett is coming out the week before the event [the Bacardi Cup]. Normally we do have a coach with us. You kind of have to because all the opposition have a coach and if you don’t have a coach out there, sailing with top guys like Cayard, they get more out of it than you."

After the Bacardi Cup they will be going straight to the Europeans at L'Escala to the north of Barcelona on 26-31 March and then on to the Worlds in Gaeta to the north of Naples on 23 April-1 May. "I’m quite looking forward to the European circuit," says Percy. "It is great here and it is perfect for what we need but it can be hard racing with a 90 boat fleet in four knots. It’s frustrating."

Obviously no conversation with the former Finn Gold medallist would be complete without some comment on Ben Ainslie's incredible hat-trick at last week's Finn Gold Cup in Rio.

"It is incredible. I think he is a long way ahead of the others. I was down the week before helping out with the coaching for Ben and Bart [Andy Simpson]. On a tricky beat, the way he sails is bloody impressive. He is a really good tactician, a really good starter. Ben is really good especially in a mixture of conditions - over tricky type conditions he is something else."

"For me, the others have got a hell of a job on their hands to approach him, to state the obvious. Three on the trot. It is pretty impressive stuff. Freddie Loof was quick to point out that he had won the worlds three times, but I then pointed out that it wasn’t three in a row..."

In the meantime Percy and Mitchell have the Bacardi Cup in their sites. "We should really try and win this one this year. We messed it up badly last year by overstepping a mark by about four miles. So we’ve got to try and not make that mistake."

The event will be impressive with 100 boats from 22 countries registered and all of the top international names taking part with the possible exception of Brazil's Torben Grail who is experiencing problems getting his boat to Miami. "The quality is absolutely ridiculous, which is great. It is hard to look at the Star not being a Olympic class because it attracts so many of the top sailors," says Percy.

Quite amusing is the Bacardi Cup website, which due to US liquor laws you need to be aged more than 21 to enter...