Banner day at Disabled Sailing Worlds

Halifax, NS (August 20, 2014) – It was a sunny day with light winds when everyone headed out to the race courses this morning at the High Liner Foods IFDS Worlds 2014, but the wind built across the harbour for all three events to complete two races each.

The winds at the Sonar course were described as fantastic – steady at 250 degrees and 12-15 kts. And for the host Canadian team, also a fantastic result with Halifax sailor Paul Tingley and his team mates Logan Campbell and Scott Lutes moving into first place followed by GBR-1 with John Robertson, Hannah Stodel and Steve Thomas in second and Aus-1 moving up to third position with Colin Harrison, Jonathan Harris, and Russell Boaden.

In the SKUD-18 competition, the Italian team of Marco Gualandris and Marta Zanetti maintained their number one position over the current world champions Alexandra Rickham and Niki Birrell who are in second place. The third position is held by Daniel Fitzgibbon and Liesl Tesch of Australia, gold medal winners in the 2012 London Paralympics.

The 2.4 mR fleet is 49 strong and full of talent. Helena Lucas of Great Britain is in first place after four races, followed by Kevin Cantin of France and Brett Willcock of New Zealand, who moved up a number of places due to a 5th place finish in the fourth race. There are still several unresolved protests for these results and final scoring isn’t available yet.

Canadians involved in Sail Able Nova Scotia demonstrated technology developed in this country in a fun race this evening in front of the IFDS competitors and officials. The gear is known as “sip ‘n puff” because it allows quadriplegics to operate a sailboat by sipping and puffing to control the sails and rudder on a sailboat.

Some people believe disabled sailing internationally should adopt this equipment to make IFDS events even more accessible. International official Costas Tsantilis from Greece was one of the people watching the demonstration: “I’ll make a point of looking at how this works. We don’t see this type of sailing in Europe at the present time,” he said.

Event website – Results

Report by event media.