U.S. Women's National Match Racing Championships

The sailing area. Image copyright Liz Bower.

by Anna Tunnicliffe

Racing was scheduled to start this morning at 9am here in St Thomas at the US Women’s Match Racing National Championships, but due to lack of wind we were postponed for about an hour. Racing did eventually commence, however, and the race committee managed to get in a full round robin. My team of Molly Vandemoer, Liz Bower, and Alice Manard, did a great job, and we finished the day with a 7-0 record.

Our first race was held in a dying breeze and we drifted across the line to take our first win of the regatta. The wind switched around and we completed the next six races in nice, but puffy and shifty conditions. We made it a little difficult on ourselves at times, but the racing was close which made it more fun because we actually did a lot of match racing.

Our closest race was against Evan Brown. She led us off the line, and rounded the top mark ahead of us. We jumped her downwind, but she held us past layline, meaning we had to follow her into the mark. We came in a tight angle, and had problems getting our spinnaker down. Once we got around the mark and sorted out everything, we could focus on our race again. We lost a little distance initially, but hit a couple shifts upwind and closed the gap again. Downwind, we pulled the same play, managed to get into the pressure before her resulting in a pass three-quarters of the way down the leg. We held on to the lead to the finish. It was a great race, and after that race, we sorted out most of our boathandling issues. It was a good race for this to happen to us because it was early enough in the round for us to make the needed corrections so we wouldn't be hindered again.


View from hosts's house. Image copyright Liz Bower.

This evening, we had a team dinner at our hosts' house. We grilled up some veggies and chicken with some rice to fuel us for tomorrow's racing. Racing resumes tomorrow morning at 9am. We are scheduled to do two more round robins in the next two days. With the forecast looking similar, we should get in a lot of good racing.

Anna Tunnicliffe