Nacra carbon 20: Mitch Booth shows up surprisingly

Mitch Booth is eating his Dutch ‘kroket’ and feeling good. This morning, he and his teammate Olivier Witteveen (NED) won three races in a row. We’re actually surprised to see him here on Texel. “Me too,” he says laughing. “Last week I decided to come and I arrived on Friday. Because I couldn’t miss it to be on Texel. I don’t know how many times I have been here, don’t ask, but it is a lot of fun. Today is a good start for Wednesday, the Dutch Open. Now it is a small regatta and ideal for training. I have never sailed a Nacra 20 before and starting to warm up for it.”

This morning it was close racing with Xander Pols and Sascha Larsen. Both teams were in a kind of match race the whole time while the rest of the fleet was way behind. “You notice there are different levels in the fleet”, says Mitch. “For a lot of sailors the circumstances were difficult. There wasn’t a lot of wind and the waves were higher than you would expect with this amount of wind. So if you are a moment not really focused than you loose a bit.”

Today and tomorrow Mitch is sailing with Dutchman Olivier Witteveen, but coming Wednesday he will race with his son Taylor (23). He did several world championships with him before and father and son are a good duo. Mitch: “He is also with us on the America’s Cup team. He will arrive on Wednesday and has to race immediately then. But he’s young, he can do that. And then we’ll see how it goes. I don’t know what our chances are at the Dutch Open, but I expect a lot of competition. There are going to be more boats and a lot of different boats than with the Nacra championships. We’ll give it a try.”

Mitch is getting ready for two more racing this afternoon. “It will be more difficult. The wind this morning was up and down. Now he is going to be more steady in strength, so that’s better. But the current is the other way and that is more challenging, because it is more difficult to line up for the start and not drift over it immediately. We’ll see.”