Silvia Mas (Barcelona, 28 years old) is more about solutions than regrets. Helmsman of Sail Team BCN, the Spanish team of the America’s Cup, asked the airplane pilots with whom he was traveling to explain the ins and outs of flight to him in order to better understand the same physical law that allows a boat with foils (fins) sail on the water. “We knew that we didn’t have our own boat to train on and we all pushed ourselves to improve,” she reasons. After winning two of the four semi-final regattas, being third in the general classification and narrowly missing out on the final, the Catalan, 470 world champion in 2021, vindicates the national talent in sailing and cannot find answers as to why. Spain has had to train almost exclusively in a simulator and rent a rival’s boat by the hour when the world’s most important sailing competition is held in Barcelona.
Ask. Is it easy to fantasize about what could have been if you had your own boat to train on?
Answer. Yes, but we can’t stay here either. How many times in life could we ask ourselves, ‘what if that’, ‘what if that’… Things are as they are, it doesn’t matter to complain.
Q. Has there been a lack of support to have your own boat?
R. Honestly, I feel quite bad that the host team has not been able to have a boat when the America’s Cup is held in Barcelona. And I don’t say it in a bad way. It’s strange, really. I don’t know what it could have been; Whether the political issue or the business issue, I don’t know, but I hope that third place is a turning point to demonstrate the talent that there is in Spain. I am convinced that now more companies will be added to help us for the next campaign.
Q. What was the most difficult?
R. Understand the concept (of the foils) and transfer it to real life. We train with the simulator, but when you get on the boat you have to link all these concepts with new sensations. You learn and debug as you navigate and it is not easy.
Q. What is your assessment of the competition?
R. The team’s performance has been a 10, honestly. I am super happy and super proud of the girls for the progress we have made, regatta after regatta.
Q. What was the minimum objective?
R. We were happy to go to the semi-finals. We knew it was complicated because the people are very good and experienced. But once we managed to get to the semi-final we just wanted to do our best.
Q. Is it better to compete with the objective achieved?
R. When they tell you that you no longer have pressure because you have already fulfilled, they lie. You are always thinking of more, more and more. We live by and for this and we have been doing it since we were eight years old. Our pressure is to do better than the day before. Reaching the semi-finals was more of an outside goal than ours, perhaps. We wanted more and we dreamed of the final. We stay at the doors.
Q. What was the key moment of the semifinals?
R. The second test (the boat missed the flight and they were last) hurt a little. We turn just from layline (the most appropriate trajectory to turn around a buoy), we arrived at the buoy in the unwind (foreign sails impede the wind’s momentum to the boat itself) of other sailboats and we lost the flight. There we could no longer surpass the rest of the boats.
Q. How long does it take to digest a situation like this?
R. It is not easy to forget the moments that mark you the most. For better or worse. But we have to be super proud of what we have achieved. If you had told us a year ago that we would have finished third in the first Copa del América after all the difficulties we have had, the entire team would sign where necessary.
Q. What obstacles have they had?
R. The team did not manage to have its own boat after trying a lot. We had to rent a sailboat for three days to acclimatize, but the weather conditions were not good and we spent only a few hours in the water. After Guillermo Altadill (the director) left, some things happened there; Later there was the issue of Tamara Echegoyen (she left the team a month before starting the competition). A lot of things have been happening during the year, but the good thing is that we have always stayed together and this made the difference on the water.
Q. Why did Guillermo and Tamara leave?
R. I don’t get into it either and I don’t have much of an idea. In the end, we were focused on our own thing.
Q. Do doubts arise when several important pieces leave?
R. No. You have to trust what you do. We didn’t have a boat, but we have spent many hours studying and analyzing; many nights looking at all kinds of boats with foils. We have given our skin. You’re going to laugh, but when I got on planes I asked the pilots how the wings worked and even touched them to understand how they worked. I did it three times. Each of us has pushed ourselves to improve, knowing that we didn’t have a boat. For the America’s Cup I have had to be a better sailor.