Repechage round decides Final Four on Day 3 of 2023 World Sailing Youth Match Racing World Championship

France’s Ange Delerce & Timothee Rossi, Australia’s Cole Tapper and Brazil’s Nicolas Bernal will join the Top Four, who gained direct entry to the first-to-three point quarter-finals yesterday.

Another classic Sydney summer day greeted the competitors with a building seabreeze allowing racing to move back to Race Area A, north east of Clark Island. The steady direction, with peaked around 17 knots in the afternoon saw the crews push the Elliott 7m class to its limits as they battled to stay in contention for this year’s World Championship.

Sadly at the end of the day, Jack Frewin from New Zealand, Ben Tylecote from Great Britain, Marius Westerlind of Sweden, and Richard Rychlik Jr. from Canada exited the competition.

“Its been a tricky week here in Sydney for us, trying to figure out the boats which are new to us as well as the breeze. Despite the disappointing and early exit from the World Championship, the venue, the host Club and the boats have all been amazing and was well worth the trip down to Sydney,” commented Marius Westerlind back at the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia.

Throughout the three days of sailing, spectators have been treated to some spectacular racing, which has remained tight across both qualifying rounds now complete. Demonstrating the skill and how close the competition really is at this year’s World Championship, New Zealand’s Jack Frewin was devastated when returning to the dock when the tiebreak for seventh to ninth had to be broken by the round robin results.

“Its really hard to know how to feel right now. Unfortunately it was a really ticky tiebreak situation between the French and Brazil for us and this time, it didn’t fall our way. We gave it our all, and had some really exciting racing,” commented Frewin.

For yesterday’s round robin winner, Team USA, skippered by Jeffrey Petersen, the team received a special invitation from 2022 Rolex Sydney Hobart Line Honours winner, Andoo Comanche, skippered by John Winning Jr. who invited the team out for a burn around Sydney Harbour on the 100ft Maxi.

For the next two days all races will be streamed live on the CYCA Youth Sailing Academy Facebook page thanks to new Official Event Partner – SailMedia. Coverage will begin live from Sydney Harbour at 1140hrs, with racing commencing at 1200hrs.

Text and images courtesy of Cruising Yacht Club of Australia.