[Written by Andy Rice]
After competing in 14 previous editions of the SB20 World Championship going back as far as 2009, British sailor John Pollard has finally fulfilled his ambition of winning the big prize in Singapore…
John Pollard and his team on Xcellent have won the SB20 World Championship after a week of predominantly light airs in Singapore. For the British skipper, the victory is vindication of a long-held ambition to make it all the way to the top of this challenging international sportsboat fleet.
Pollard has come close in the past, climbing on to the podium on two previous occasions without quite managing the final step. The British sailor, from Torbay in the south-west of England, has tended to rely on strong breeze for good results, but his dominant victory in the light airs of Singapore along with crew members Henry Wetherell and David Chapman shows that Pollard has now become an all-round master of the SB20.
LIGHT AIRS MAESTROS
“We’ve been working on light-wind setups, rig set-up, mast characteristics and looking for differences in the sails, especially the jib,” he explained. “We’ve generated good light airs speed even though we’re one of the heavier teams. We were around 264kg all-up, 6 kilos off the maximum 270kg class limit, and probably about 9kg over what I think is the ideal SB20 crew weight of 255kg. But our light-airs setups with our rig tensions and control of the sail shapes gave us a speed edge, for sure.”
Even though most of the racing took place in shifty, tactical conditions, Pollard said raw speed was always critical: “You’ve got to be able to launch from the line and hold your lane, always, whatever the conditions. From then on, it’s about getting the first shift, which is what we managed to do. It was an oscillating breeze predominantly. There were a few odd ones in between, but mostly the breeze was going through a 3-to-8 minute cycle of oscillation. So the first thing is get the good start, and then look for that vital first cross.”
Pollard paid tribute to his crew: “Henry I’ve sailed with for many years and we’ll continue to do so. David Chapman, well I’ve known him since the Cowes Worlds (2017) and we spoke at the Worlds last year in Dubai about sailing together. I just felt he knows the boat so well and he knows what he can do on a tactician’s course, and David did an outstanding job this week.”
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