RIO DE JANEIRO
2016 OLYMPIC / PARALYMPIC GAMES
CLUB YACHTING
Rio de Janeiro or January River in English, is the venue for the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Liesl and I are here training for three weeks exactly one year before the games to start to get a feel for the conditions before the big event. What a complicated venue to sail in!
Our course will be set in Guanabara Bay but because of the large water mass inland it behaves like a large river but with huge tide movements in all directions. It is surrounded by 700m tall mountains that stop any true wind coming in except for a small opening at the river mouth that lets a weak seabreeze in sometimes.
On a land breeze day, a continuous stream of jet aircraft fly low over the water to land at the domestic airport next to the marina. The planes fly so low that the jet wash from them can knock over your boat with a nice autotack. They say they will stop this for the Olympics but not the Paralympics so it will add another layer of complexity for us.
And now the pollution. It is worse than you imagine. The water in the Olympic marina is putrid with raw sewage. An untreated sewer drains directly into it leaving the water black, dead, stinking and with human waste floating in it. On a tow out to training one day we got a surprise when one of the many condoms in the water hooked onto our towrope and wouldn’ t come off! The water in the race area is no better because it now contains rubbish, plastic bags, vegetation and dead animals.
Two days ago we went up Sugarloaf Mountain to get a look over the city. From up there Rio is the most spectacular city in the world with its bald mountains, green valleys and white beaches. It’ s only at ground level when you smell the truth that all is not good.
This experience makes me realise how lucky we are to have pristine Pittwater and the RPAYC. In Marina de Gloria there are many massive multimillion dollar yachts moored there with white gleaming topsides but they are floating in sewage..... I think we are doing pretty well in our little club down there on the Northern Beaches.
BY DAN FITZGIBBON
Dan and Liesl( image top right) will be in action at the 2016 Paralympic games in Rio from September 7 – 18 2016.
32 YACHTSMAN