Liz (right) Hands The Spinnaker Pole While Molly (left) Prepares To Recover The Spinnaker. Image copyright Fried Elliott/www.friedbits.com
by Anna Tunnicliffe
It was a long, but successful day for us today at the ISAF World Match Racing Championships. After failing to advance to the gold round yesterday, we had to battle today in the repecharge to win our way into the knockout series for the last two spots for the quater finals. We managed to win our group with a 5-1 record; tied for first, but won the tie against Netherlands' Renee Groeneveld.
Our first race of the day was a bye, so we sat out and watched what was happening on the course. In our first actual race, we led off the line, but let our opponent get to the left of us and she gained back a good deal of the distance she had been behind. We were still ahead at the second top mark, but decided to gybe/set, whereas she just went round the mark, set and held. As it turned out, she ended up in more breeze and got just ahead of us at the finish line. After that, we knew that we had to win our next two races to stay alive. We had great starts in the next two races and held the lead all around the course to secure our place in the repecharge knockout.
Tomorrow morning, we will race against the second place finisher in the other repecharge group, Ekatarina Skudina from Russia. The knock out series is a first-to-two points series, with the winner advancing to the quater finals. These will take place immediately after our knockout series.
We are very happy with how we sailed today in the lighter breeze. Since all of our practice had been in bigger breeze, we knew that we had to be very precise with everything in the boat and our timing; the team did a great job.
Tonight is the regatta dinner at the New York Yacht Club. It is a formal dinner, which I know will be fantastic. We are looking forward to lots of great racing tomorrow, and the forecast is for good sailing breeze again. You can check out the results at the regatta website and also follow along with live tracking and an updating blog.
We would like to thank Carmeuse and Trinity Yachts for their continued support of our campaign for the 2012 Olympics in London. We would also like to thank US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics (USSTAG) and its sponsors for their support.
Team Tunnicliffe
Women's World Match Racing Championships
