Top dog

Ian Williams and his team look set to top ISAF match race rankings come May

Ian Williams and his crew of Simon Shaw, Mark Nichols and his own brother Mark yesterday won the Marseille International Match Race, sailed in J/80s with asymmetric kites (unlike the JPMorgan series where they sail with symmetrics). This result was significant for Williams' Team Pindar as it seems likely it will push him to no.1 in the ISAF rankings - the first time a British sailor has ever achieved this (Chris Law once reached no.2).

"I haven’t done the exact calculations since winning, but what I worked out before I went was that we wouldn’t go to no1 in the rankings which are out tomorrow or the next day because Sebastien Col isn’t going to lose any points," explains Williams. The ISAF match race ranking is calculated over a two year period, with results from the first 12 months of this period scoring for half and results from each event being weighted according to its grading - hence Tour events score highest, followed by Grade 1s, Grade 2s, etc (Marseille was Grade 1).

The Marseille International Match Race was won by Col last year but was held a week later and so still falls within the second year over which the rankings are calculated. "So I think we are going to close the gap on Col, but he is going to stay no.1 for the March rankings," says Williams. "But then for the May rankings, I’m pretty sure there aren’t any major events between now and then, and by that time his Marseilles result will have dropped out and he won’t have had an opportunity to replace it. So I am 95% sure we’ll go to no1 in the May rankings."

This is a phenomenal result for Williams and by coincidence will coincide with the second anniversary of his leaving full time employment as a lawyer.

After the May rankings are published, Williams looks to be in good shape to hold on to the top spot for much of the rest of this year, save for a small dip late summer. "We won two grade one events in August 2005 which are currently a year old, but when they drop out my year old results won’t be very good, so we’ll be vulnerable around August/September time." After this period he should regain the top spot. "Certainly I am hoping to be up there for quite a long time. We now have four to six really good counters all over the last six months."

It has been a good couple of weeks for Williams. Apart from his win in Marseille he was also calling the shots on Fred and Steve Howe's Warparth, that narrowly won the Farr 40 class at the recent Acura Miami Grand Prix. "Miami was quite a big deal as well, particulary for me because a lot of people see match racing as a very specific part of the sport and this shows that the skills are transferable between match racing to fleet racing - which I’ve always maintained. Winning in Miami, reinforces that."

Ian Williams provides his account of the racing:

We went into the final day 2-0 up in our best-of-five semi-final against Eugeny Neugodnikov (RUS), having managed to avoid the carnage in the last race of the previous day. We had been leading Neogodnikov up the last beat with both of us on port tack. Meanwhile, the other semi-final, (Pierre-Antoine Morvan (FRA) v Mathieu Richard (FRA)) were locked in a luffing duel down their first run. We passed to windward of the other match then heard a loud bang: Morvan had crashed into Neugodnikov and broken the Russian’s backstay. This left us to take the win in the race. Meanwhile the umpires decided that, once it was clear that the port tacker was not going to keep clear, Richard was obliged to (but did not) give room to Morvan for the obstruction. As Morvan was unable to continue in the race due to the damage caused, Richard was shown the black flag and disqualified from the race.

In race 3 of our semi-final, sailed in 15 knots of breeze and lumpy seas, we came off the start line on port tack to leeward of Neugodnikov. Unfortunately, we did not have the speed to get round him and eventually had to instigate a tacking duel. This initially went badly for us, with the Russian pulling away, but finally we forced him to tack in some bad waves which allowed us to split away to the left. When we came back together we were level and ducked him, while he went for the slam-dunk - always a risky move in choppy seas. The resultant luff by us both forced him to tack away and left him with a penalty. This should have been race over as were now ahead on the right and a penalty up. However, we missed the layline on the run by a couple of lengths and Neugodnikov was able soak down to us and gain room at the bottom mark. A slightly untidy drop by us gave him a bit of a jump, but from then on we were able to maintain the deficit of only two lengths and he was never able to complete his penalty. Eventually he took it just before the finish line and we were able to finish comfortably ahead and march on into the final.

Just after finishing, we turned to see how the other semi-final was going; and it was following the same “demolition derby” style as the day before. Richard, who went into the day 2-0 down, rounded the last windward mark just ahead and a penalty up. However, he managed to trawl his kite on the hoist (all too easy to do with the asymmetric spinnakers) and his boat stopped. At the same time, Morvan chose to bear away behind Richard but, as Richard had stopped, got nowhere near making it round and crashed into Richard about three feet from the stern, picking up another penalty. He quickly completed the penalty and miraculously managed to get back ahead of Richard. Coming into the finish, Morvan forced Richard initially the wrong side of the finish boat, and as Richard luffed to round the finish boat, his spinnaker touched its bow. As that happened, Morvan crossed the line, then proceeded to take his penalty. Richard then crossed the line but was given a penalty for touching the committee boat - confusion reigned!

After an hour of jury deliberations, the race was awarded to Morvan, the theory being that he crossed the line first and the penalties were subsequently offset (applied retrospectively). Confused? I guess that’s why it took an hour to sort out!

So ‘Team Pindar’ prepared ourselves to race Morvan, but that wasn’t the end of it. The jury then went off to consider the damage. As it was assessed at over €1,000 by the person going to do the repair the jury had no option but to disqualify Morvan from the race (after another hour of deliberation). Richard was awarded the point and the semi-final resumed at 2-1, but now in a fairly fresh 20 knots of breeze. The next race saw several place changes with Richard rounding the last top mark ahead, but Morvan surfing past on the run to take the semi-final and earn the right to face us in the final.

By the time the final started, the Mistral had stepped up again to 20-25 knots with big seas, prompting the race organisers to insist on us sailing with a reef in the mainsails. We were also now short of time so the final was shortened to best-of-three.

We came off the line to windward and bow forward in race one as Morvan had to luff to shoot the pin. From there, we steadily extended and took a fairly comfortable win.

Race 2 was a much closer affair. We held similar positions at start time but this time Morvan was much more advanced, resulting in a drag race out to the left. Great early boat speed on our part initially allowed us to climb off him, but then later he pulled forward alarmingly. Fortunately for us, the point at which he had advanced enough to cross came at exactly the same time as the layline and we were able to tack and lead back to the top mark. The run was fairly uneventful, despite a huge amount of spray coming off each boat, as was the next beat. We rounded the top mark with a couple of boat-lengths lead and pulled off a great set. At the speeds we were doing downwind on such short courses, as soon as the spinnaker is set you are setting up for the gybe. Unfortunately for us, the lazy spinnaker sheet had gone under the bow so our intrepid bowman Mark Williams went forward to clear it, while the rest of us hung out as far back as we could go and watched the bow, complete with bowman hanging over the front, plow into each wave.

Finally the sheet was cleared from the bow just as we got to the layline and we began to pull the spinnaker round into the gybe. However, although the lazy sheet was clear of the bow, it was not clear of the pulpit and all that happened is the spinnaker bunched up around the pulpit. Forward again went Mark and cleared the snag, then we immediately gybed. Meanwhile, Morvan (who we hadn’t spared a thought to up until then) had gybed on the lay-line to the pin and was planing rather fast towards it. Having taken so long to gybe, we were well past the layline to the committee boat. So the calls came to blow the vang, let go of the mainsheet, curl the spinnaker and hang on as we sent the boat as close to the wind as we could without broaching. This approach was getting us to the line a few seconds too late so we sheeted on the spinnaker a little more (to the point of broaching) and accelerated again.

At this point, we assessed that we would probably arrive at the finish a couple of seconds ahead, but only if we made it to windward of the committee boat which was looking doubtful. Evidently though, Morvan was having similar problems to us and a few seconds from the line he broached. That allowed us to curl the spinnaker, lay the committee boat and cross the line ahead to take the final 2-0.