13 minute read
david liebenberg profi le
Olympic hopeful David Liebengerg, now 27, starting racing aboard his parents' Express 27 Friday at the tender age of 2. By age 3 had became a regular on the crew, but he had to wait until he was 7 to join the Richmond Yacht Club Junior Program. There he raced his fi rst El Toro, Killer Bee. When David was about 8, his dad John switched to the Antrim 27 Always Friday. On the Antrim, David learned about asymmetrical kites. At age 10 he transitioned from the El Toro to the Optimist, and, over the next three years, found success in national and international regattas. He followed that up, in 8th grade, with sailing on an RYC pickup team in 420s and CFJs. At age 14 he discovered speed when he started sailing the 29er skiff with his friend David Blackett.
Latitude 38: You found the 29er to be a lot more exciting?
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David Liebenberg: Yes, exactly. I discovered that I liked going fast pretty quickly.
L38: How did your 29er sailing evolve?
DL: I started driving, for two different people, David Blackett and Michael Scott. Then I switched to crewing. I sailed with Max Fraser for four years. So he was my long-term partner in youth sailing.
L38: And then you went to Tufts, class of 2014. So you would have still been at Tufts when you were with the American Youth Sailing Force team in the Youth America's Cup in 2013?
DL: Correct. That was the summer between my junior and senior year. That was a truly unique experience. In some terms, there's never going to be a chance again to sail on multi-million dollar boats with some of your best friends in the world and no owner, no one paying the bills, and no one paying you. It was just us doing exactly what we wanted to do.
L38: How did that team come together, and how did you get on the team? DL: Ian Andrews was the team manager, and he asked me pretty early on right after it was announced. I said, "That sounds like a great idea — let's do it!" We started with four or fi ve people and tried to start building. It's an interesting situation because you don't have the boats or anything like the boats to train on. So we tried to get on F-18s and A-Class catamarans and all sorts of different stuff. We kept adding people as we identifi ed roles. OK, we need a big strong bowman, and we need a trimmer, and basically fi nding
WILL RICKETSON / US SAILING our friends that we sailed with in the past and building a team based on ability and body size around it. L38: Watching the Youth America's Cup was some of the most interesting and fun racing to watch of that whole event. The fl eet racing was so tight. DL: It was unbelievable. It was such a blast to be in. With the helicopter fl ying low overhead, it was really something else that I haven't experienced since then. L38: After the America's Cup in 2013 did that program just end suddenly? DL: Yeah it did. There were two guys on the team who were young enough to do the next one. There was talk about trying to keep the team going, and there was a little bit of effort made. Offi cially it sort of fell apart, but we're all still friends and still sailing with each other a lot in all sorts of different boats. So it didn't just disintegrate and evaporate; all the connections are still there. And we had a couple offi ce managers for our team that I still worked with in my Olympic campaigns, who helped me out quite a bit. L38: After that you got into the 49er, to do the 2016 Olympics in Rio. Who did you sail with? DL: I sailed with Dan Morris. Throughout the summers while I was in college, Dan and I would actually go sail a 49er after work most days and go get our butts kicked in the Berkeley Circle. So I had fi nally sorta fi gured out how to jibe the boat in 20 knots, which is a feat of itself, but had no idea how to actually race them or sail them or tune them. We'd never sailed against another boat. When I graduated I worked for a couple months right afterward, then Dan and I said, "Hey let's do this full time," and it all fell in line. We just scraped by funding-wise for the fi rst couple months until we had a couple good results. It was an abbreviated campaign, because it was basically 14 months before the trials started that we decided to sail full-time. So it wasn't a proper four-year cycle. We crammed quite a bit of stuff and pushed pretty hard for the little time we had. L38: Did you qualify? DL: We did not. We ended up third at
David Liebenberg and Sarah Newberry are striving to make it to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in the Nacra 17 class. Below: David has been sailing his entire life.
Above: David Liebenberg and Sarah Newberry at the Hempel World Cup Series Miami on January 31. Below: Young David at the helm of his family's Antrim 27.
the trials.
L38: Were you the crew or the helm on that campaign?
DL: I was driving.
L38: Then you decided to partner with Sarah Newberry on the Nacra 17 for this quad. How did you connect with her?
DL: We actually met on a ferry in Europe. It was one of my fi rst events in Europe sailing the 49er. We both went from Palma de Mallorca to Barcelona after an event. That was when we first met. You sorta meet everyone, especially all the Americans, quickly because it's a pretty small community. So we were friends. She got engaged after the Rio
JOHN LIEBENBERG Olympics, and I was looking for a partner for a year on and off for the 49er. I was sailing with different people and couldn't quite fi nd the right partner. She touched base and said, "Hey, I'm getting married in the fall and I want to jump right back into a campaign after that, so if you're still looking for a partner, let's talk." That happened in the summer of 2017.
L38: How old is Sarah and where does she live?
DL: She's 30. And she lives in Miami and is from Miami. She's a member of Coral Reef Yacht Club.
L38: How is it working out having a training and campaign partner who lives on the opposite coast, so far away from you?
DL: It's not as bad as you think because we spend so much time training that I have almost moved to Miami. I probably spent a total of 10 weeks at home in 2018, and I was just with the boat the rest of the time. So it's not actually as bad as if were doing a part-time campaign where you're one week on, one week off, and then you're fl ying back and forth constantly.
On January 27-February 3, David and Sarah competed in the Hempel World Cup Series Miami. They fi nished 10th out of 27 Nacra 17s and qualifi ed for the 2019 US Sailing Team.
L38: On the Nacra, is Sarah always the helmsperson?
DL: Yes, Sarah is the helm and I'm the crew. And that's a relatively unique setup. Most teams, 70 or 80% at least, have the male driving and the female crewing. We feel like it's a pretty big advantage for us to be the other way around.
L38: Does it have to do with weight distribution?
DL: A little bit of weight distribution and a little bit of strength as well. Guys are generally the bigger, stronger person. Sarah can drive a boat great, and if you can have more muscle pulling on the ropes that are more loaded, it's a pretty straightforward advantage.
L38: After Miami, are you going to be coming and doing some training at the FAST USA Center on Treasure Island?
DL: I don't think we are. Initially we had planned to do a couple months there, but I think we're going to end up in Newport, Rhode Island, for the summer. But there've been plenty of tech camps even when we end up not sailing. It's still an advantage to all the athletes even if you don't end up sailing there. There's a lot of resources coming out of the FAST USA.
L38: What's in Newport that is going to be the center of your sailing in the summer?
DL: A couple of things go into it. First, our boats are going to be in Miami, and it's a one- or one-and-a-half-day drive as opposed to a fi ve-day drive to get there. And the other really attractive thing about it is the access to the ocean, so we can go have bigger waves and swells or have fl at water as well. And San Francisco is great; you know what it's going to give you. It's going to give you short chop and a lot of breeze every day, and that is very valuable for good chunks of training, but we feel like right now we need access to the ocean a little bit more. L38: This is obviously a full-time job for you and you're not independently wealthy, so how do you manage to survive?
DL: Always just scraping by. I do a little bit of pro sailing, I do a little bit of rigging work on race boats, and some coaching to pay rent and health insurance. That's how I get by. And then from the team perspective and fundraising, we're doing a lot of private asks from most of our connections in the sailing community and people we've sailed with and against growing up. Different foundations are supporting us as well: the Richmond Yacht Club Foundation, the St. Francis Foundation. Richmond's been really, really good to us. Especially growing up there, I've been in touch with the community and the club. All of the membership base there has been extremely helpful as well.
L38: What are the next steps you're gonna take toward getting into the Olympics?
DL: There's two things that still need to happen. One is to qualify the country for the Olympics in the Nacra, which has not been done yet. There's two chances this year: the Pan-American Games in Peru at the end of July, and the Worlds in Auckland in December. And any American boat has the ability to do that, it's just the top American boat that does that. And that's the country getting the berth at the Olympics. And then the second step is the actual qualifi cation process to represent the US and get that berth.
L38: So, one American team qualifi es the country. And then among the American teams you still have to qualify to be the chosen team? Or can there be more than one team that goes to the Olympics for the Nacra?
DL: Only one team per country in every class in the Olympics.
L38: What is the Nacra 17 like to sail?
DL: Coming from the 49er, which is an extremely challenging boat to sail — from the moment you leave the dock to the moment you get back to the dock
JOHN LIEBENBERG
David raced El Toros and Optis as a young junior.
you're switched to on basically because it's always trying to capsize itself. You're keeping it upright. The Nacra is still a catamaran, so it's very stable. When you're resting, you can sort of just sit and switch off, which was new to me. But when you are foiling it is way, way more intense, and there's a lot more focus that needs to happen at every single moment. It's a relatively unstable system. We use our crew weight to move forward and backward to control the ride height while we're fl ying. As crew, I need to be staring at the bows and the next waves that are happening, and if I look away or have a lapse in focus, we're going to have a little bit of a crash probably.
L38: Does that happen very often?
DL: It depends on the sea state. The boats have about two feet of ride height, so we'll fl y two feet out of the water. And if the waves are under two feet it's relatively relaxed and easy. But we need practice in the ocean and bigger waves. It becomes really exciting very quickly because the boat is constantly trying to literally jump out of the back of the wave. You can get all the foils off the water and then you just do a big nose dive. How to fi nagle the boat around the waves without having it jump out the backside of one is the challenge.
L38: How much wind do you need to get up on the foils?
DL: About 6 knots, maybe a little bit less if it's fl at water. Really not that much at all. We're going maybe 16 knots in 6 knots of wind. We cover a lot of distance downwind.
L38: That must be incredible! What's the top speed like?
DL: About high 20s. We've hit a little
bit over 26 knots. As far as foiling catamarans go, they're actually not that fast because they have a lot of daggerboard in the water. The foils are really large, and that's part of the reason we can get foiling in such little wind. So there's a little bit of a tradeoff there. But we go plenty fast enough. I never feel the need to be going 30. When you're on the trap going 25 you're gonna notice if you hit something. You don't need to be going any faster.
L38: Are you able to foil through tacks and jibes?
DL: In a perfect setting, you can foil through a jibe if it's fl at water and the right breeze range, say 9-14 knots. It's like glamor sailing. On a race course it often gets really chopped up because of all the umpire boats and coach boats and other wakes. And you don't try to push it because if you mess up a foiling jibe it can be pretty costly, so you'll dial back and do an 80% jibe so you'll have nice repeatable ones. It's not really possible to do a foiling tack. We can't move our bodies fast enough across the boat. The America's Cup boats absolutely whip the turn; if anyone is not holding on they go flying off the boat. We'd need to get off the trap, run across the boat, and clip in all at the same time, so it's not even close to happening.
We wish David and Sarah all the best in going on to Tokyo in 2020, and bringing home a medal. For more about their campaign, see their website at www.usamultihull2020.com. — latitude/chris
The American Youth Sailing Force competed in the Youth America's Cup on San Francisco Bay in 2013.
JOHN LIEBENBERG
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