Team Tunnicliffe Dousing Their Red Spinnaker As They Round The Leeward Mark. Image copyright Fried Elliott/www.friedbits.com June 2010.
by Anna Tunnicliffe
We ended the day 1-1 against France's Claire Leroy in the semi final match up, after earlier advancing into the semi's seeded second in the round robin with a 16-2 record.
The day started with seven more round robin races to be completed in the second round robin. We lost one race against Sally Barkow, with a penalty about ten boat lengths before the finish. It was an awesome race. Sally led all around the course, and on the second upwind, we caught right up to her. Downwind, we managed to get to her left. We both gybed to port. We attempted to gybe back and didn't complete our gybe in time and received a penalty. It was a very fun race and we were happy that it happened the way it did.
We won the other races, some of them closer than others, but finished the round with our only two losses to Sally. Claire finished the round 14-4, and the fourth team advancing was Genny Tulloch with a 13-5 record.
In our first match in the semi's, we drew a penalty on Claire, led her off the line, and held on to the lead all around the course. In the second race, we split directions off the line with us going left and her going right. When we came together at the top mark, she was a couple of boat lengths ahead of us. Downwind we caught up and rounded right behind her at the bottom mark.
At the top mark we were still bow to stern, but sailed to windward of her and got hooked. We sailed for a long time upwind past the mark on port tack waiting to set the spinnaker. When we finally bore away to race to the finish, we had a bit of a boat handling problem, and couldn't get the pounce on her that we'd set up to do. She went on to win the race and even up the series 1-1. The other series between Genny and Sally is also tied at 1-1.
Racing continues tomorrow morning when we will finish up the semis and complete the finals and petit-finals.
Team Tunnicliffe
US Boat Santa Maria Cup
