Musto Skiff World Championship 2024: Age Is No Barrier

08.08.2024 17:45

Andy Rice shows us that age is no limit… particularly when tackling one of the meanest, unyielding, high-performance dinghies on the high seas – in the Musto Skiff World Championship 2024. Musto Skiff Worlds The last time I competed in a Musto Skiff World Championship in Weymouth was in June 2012. It was the last […]

The post Musto Skiff World Championship 2024: Age Is No Barrier appeared first on Sailing Today.

musto skiff world championship 2023 — Credit: Annamaria Ramy / ACO 12th Musto Skiff World Championship 2023

Andy Rice shows us that age is no limit… particularly when tackling one of the meanest, unyielding, high-performance dinghies on the high seas – in the Musto Skiff World Championship 2024.

Musto Skiff Worlds

The last time I competed in a Musto Skiff World Championship in Weymouth was in June 2012. It was the last major event before Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy went into security lockdown a month before the London 2012 Olympic Regatta was due to take place. This year I again competed at a Musto Skiff Worlds in Weymouth just before an Olympic Games, with just four days’ rest before jetting down to Marseille for the sailing events of Paris 2024.

It was a little incongruous to see some of our Olympic stars like ILCA 7 sailor Micky Beckett and the Nacra 17 duo, John Gimson and Anna Burnet, putting in some last-minute practice on Portland Harbour in the drizzly rain of Dorset just days before they land in the sweltering heat of Mediterranean France.

Normally, being the nosy hack that I am, I’d stop our Olympians for a proper chat and outstay my welcome. But this time they earned a reprieve from my irritating inquisitiveness, because I was focused on the job in hand, to try to win the Grand Masters division of the Musto Skiff Worlds. This is for the 55 to 59-year-olds still mad enough to tackle one of the meanest, unyielding high-performance dinghies on the high seas.

Age is No Limit

Not that this is even the oldest division. Lymington’s Nigel Wallbank was competing in the Legends category for the over 60s, and he even led the 75-boat fleet for a whole lap of one race in Weymouth Bay, eventually finishing 10th after two laps. At the age of 70, Nigel is vibrant proof of what’s possible if you keeps yourself fit and agile.

Keeping myself fit and agile doesn’t go hand in hand with reporting and commentating on great sailors at various events around the world. But I was pretty sure my starts would be OK. Maybe I’d even pull off a port-tack start across the fleet – although I didn’t quite manage a ‘pure’ port tack this time). I was fortunate to find I clicked with the new square-top mainsail and seemed to be going pretty fast upwind on the same old settings that I’d inherited from former World Champion Bruce Keen when I bought GBR534 from him three years ago.

Downwind was a different matter, however. With all the nimble agility of President Biden bounding down the steps of Air Force One, I make my way gingerly across the boat through every gybe. Even after 14 years in the boat, a tack, a gybe, a hoist, or a drop, none of these manoeuvres are to be taken lightly. A capsize is never far away.

Other twinkletoes in the fleet execute these manoeuvres consistently, effortlessly and flawlessly. I, however, was determined not to be distracted by bright, shiny objects being flaunted by the Gen Zs in the fleet. I would sail within my means, not succumb to the temptations of a high-speed carve gybe and potentially lose 20 or 30 boats in a capsize. Instead I’d grudgingly give away one or two places through every safety gybe.

The strategy mostly worked, and I completed a capsize-free regatta across 14 mostly breezy races. Until the final run of the final race when it soon became apparent that I hadn’t quite locked off the mainsheet in the Harken jammer properly. One small but very costly mistake that dropped me in the drink, and saw me plummet from about 15th to 50th across the finish line. Still, if you’d have told me that I’d get my Grand Masters trophy and 17th out of 75 before the regatta, I’d have bitten your arm off. That’s me, hooked on another year of Musto Skiff racing.

It was great to have Keith Musto out on the water watching us and even offering tuning tips. When the 1964 Olympic silver medallist suggests you might want to pull in your outhaul, you take notice! Keith has been a supporter of the class since its inception and loves the ethos of the class where everyone mucks in and helps out everyone else. As to the winner, local lad Sam Pascoe was unstoppable, taking the world title by an impressive margin.

His training partner and good friend Sam Barker kept his composure despite the rapid decline of his dad, Bill Barker, who died from leukaemia the night before the final days’ racing. Despite his increasing fragility, Bill had defied doctor’s orders a couple of days earlier to venture out into the wavy bay to watch his son competing at the front of the fleet. Bill was a well-known, ever smiling face around WPNSA, and he would have smiled to see son Sam finish eighth in the Worlds after what had been an emotional rollercoaster of a regatta.