Rod Davis Ready to Compete in ORACLE RC44 Sailing Competition on San Diego Bay

Tuesday, 01 March 2011
Contact: Dale Frost (619) 686-6461

America’s Cup sailor and Olympic gold medalist Rod Davis, who travels the world to compete in top-notch sailing events, has come home to Coronado to test his skills in the ORACLE RC44 Cup races here in San Diego.

Davis looks forward to the challenge and tough competition of this international sailing championship that features 11 teams representing nine nations. The five day event begins Wednesday, March 2, and concludes Sunday on San Diego Bay.

With decades of high level sailing experience, Davis is the coach and professional skipper for Team Ceeref from Slovenia. Other countries represented are New Zealand, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Austria, Russia and the U.S.

The races will be held in north San Diego Bay, providing the public an opportunity to view close quarter, fast-action sailing from along the North Embarcadero.

Davis said the 44-foot-long, carbon fiber monohulls are complicated to sail. For the crews, it is a mental game as well as a physical game. Last year he was Team Ceeref’s tactician during the RC44 worldwide championship tour.

“It’s like playing basketball and chess at the same time,” he said in an e-mail from Oman on the Arabian peninsula, where he had just finished racing in another sailing series. “To make the boat perform, the crew has a lot going on,” he said.

This includes hoisting and taking down sails, constantly trimming the sails to squeeze the best performance out of the boat and leaning out over the water on the rails of the boat to further increase speed—a move called “hiking out.”

All of that happens while the fast-moving boats race at close quarters, sometimes inches apart.

Considering wind, bay current and race course, a team’s tactician must come up with a strategy to gain the best start as the boat crosses the starting line. Then, the crew must keep the boat in the best position to sail fast while at times blocking the air of competitors’ sails.

Davis has a lot of local knowledge about weather conditions.

He competed here in three America’s Cup races, in 1988, 1992, and 1995.

“The wind conditions in San Diego fit the RC44 boat well,” he said. He added that America’s Cup weather studies show that San Diego almost always has wind, and 80 percent of the time it is blowing between eight and 12 knots.

Davis was involved in 10 America’s Cup campaigns, sailing for various countries including the United States, New Zealand, Australia and Italy.

He said he enjoys the RC44 races, likening the competitiveness to that of the America’s Cup and the Olympics because sailors “put everything into it.”

The San Diego RC44 races are the first event in the 2011 RC44 Championship Tour that continues on to Europe. It concludes in November in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands.

Davis has won Olympic medals for two countries, the United States and New Zealand. Representing the United States at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, he won a gold medal in the Soling sailing class. Representing New Zealand, he captured the silver medal in 1992 in the Star sailing class.

A Soling is a 27-foot keelboat. The fiberglass boat was used in Olympic sailing competitions from 1968 until 2000 and was sailed by a three-member crew.

A Star, or Starboat, is a 23-foot keelboat raced by two crewmembers. The Stars have been an Olympic sailing class boat since 1932 and continue to be raced by champion sailors in many international competitions.

Davis has since served as Yachting New Zealand’s Olympic director.

As a youngster, he first began sailing a small “Sunfish” boat while living in Key West, Florida.

After his family moved to Coronado in 1969, he started sailing sabots, the small sailing dinghies. Then he began sailing with various crews and boats at Coronado and San Diego Yacht Clubs.

“Some of my best sailing memories are of my younger sailing days, sailing with accomplished sailors, including (San Diegans) Chuck Hope, Jerry LaDow and Lowell North,” he said. “They gave me the breaks and lessons to go forward with my sailing.”

Davis pointed out that with a long history of yachting, San Diego has produced many world and Olympic champions over the years.

“I think it is the culture of San Diego that you compete at a high level when you sail here. It is expected of you,” he said. “That is a good thing as it raises the level of everyone. And produces excellent sailors.”