Splitting Tacks, copyright Fried Elliott, June 2010 - www.friedbits.com
by Anna Tunnicliffe
It was a beautiful day today in Kiel, Germany. The day warmed up nicely as the sun came out. We had a good day of sailing with some great races. We won all four of our races today to finish the round up 6-1, and won group A.
The wind was great on the match race course; we were one of only four fleets that got in some racing. The wind was light and although it slowly shifted to the right all day to the sea breeze direction, it held enough for our races to be completed.
Our first race of the day was against Mary Rook (GBR). We had a decent start against her, and led around the top mark by a boat length. Downwind, she managed to roll over us on starboard, but we held her well past the layline to lead her back to the leeward mark and maintain our lead. Up the second beat, we extended our lead to about five lengths and won the race.
Our last race of the day was the most exciting for us. We raced GBR's Lucy Macgregor. We split ways off the start line with us going right and her going left. There was a big right shift and at one point it looked like the race was going well for us. Then the right faded a bit and it went back to the left. At our first meeting, we were slightly ahead and were able to leebow her back to the left. We split again and came together at the top mark; she was just ahead of us by a boat length after getting better pressure on the left side. Downwind, we matched her first gybe to starboard, and rolled over her. However, she was able to get the breeze in her kite again quite quickly and prevented us from gybing into the lead.
She led around the leeward mark by about one and a half boat lengths. After losing a bit of distance at the beginning of the second upwind, we were able to close the gap so that we were only about one boat length behind by the end of the windward leg. We had some nice spinnaker work and were able to get around her and take the starboard advantage and passed her three-quarters of the way down the leg to take the win. It was a great race with which to end the day.
Entering this final race, we had already locked ourselves into the gold fleet, but we wanted to have a good race to keep practicing everything we have been working on. Both us and Lucy advanced out of group A, both with 6-1 records. Our fellow USSTAG team mates in group B also won their round with a 6-1 record to advance to gold fleet. It was rewarding to see that our hard training in Chicago at the Chicago Match Race Center, the week before we got here, paid off.
Tomorrow we start the gold fleet racing. The gold fleet races are for seeding in the quarter finals, and the top two teams from the repecharge round will come up and join the gold fleet for the quarters.
Team Tunnicliffe
Kieler Woche
