Team Tunnicliffe preparing to set sail. Image copyright Fried Elliott/www.friedbits.com
by Anna Tunnicliffe
The final day of racing concluded today at the Boat US Santa Maria Cup and Team Tunnicliffe came home with a bronze medal after winning the petit-finals 2-0 over Sally Barkow. The finals were fought between Genny Tulloch and France's Claire Leroy. Claire came out on top after defeating Genny 3-2 to defend her title from last year.
The day started hot again, but with a bit more cloud cover which meant that we weren't going to get a sea breeze, but were going to sail in the gradient breeze. The 5-9 kt breeze was off the land so it made for very puffy and shifty conditions. In addition to that, the usual Annapolis boating traffic was out, resulting in a lot of challenging chop.
We began the day finishing up the semi's against Claire. Claire sailed the first race very well and won the race easily. In the second race, we were leading the race, but then got caught down speed on the second upwind leg and she managed to sail around us. We were a bit disappointed that we didn't move on, but psyched ourselves up for the petit-finals against Sally.
The first race of the petit finals was close and exciting. We led around the top mark by about one boat length and gybed early. She extended on port tack and then gybed later in the leg. We hit some chop a little bit harder than she did and she managed to use that opportunity to pass us. But coming into the leeward mark, we managed to get just inside her and rounded ahead. We had to tack immediately around the mark to avoid fouling her, but tacked back soon after so as not to split too far from her. We both sailed on starboard tack for a fair ways, heading towards pressure. This time, Sally hit the waves harder than we did, and it gave us an opportunity to advance a couple of boat lengths ahead and hold on until the finish.
In the second race, we managed to get our bow into the breeze just before her off the line and controlled the side of the course with the breeze the whole race. We had a huge lead around the top mark and extended on the downwind leg. On the second upwind leg, she caught up a bit as we sailed a little out of the pressure, but it wasn't enough to pass us and we went on to win the series 2-0.
We are happy with our overall result at the event. We were using this regatta as a training event for our team. Our next couple of events are in Elliots but since our next major event is the World Championships coming up in September in Sonars, we don't have that many events to practice with 4 people. In addition to that training, we also tried some new moves that we don't normally do: we wanted to see how they would work and get a feel for them. We had a great coach working with us during the event, Dave Dellenbaugh, who helped us out a lot between races and in the evenings. You can check the final results at the regatta website.
Our next event is in Kiel, Germany which starts on the 18th. First though, we have a couple of days at home before heading to Chicago Match Race Center to do some training before we head over to Germany for the event.
We have a lot of thank you's to give out for this event, but specifically we would like to thank Frieda and Jim Wildey for housing us. We would also like to thank all of the volunteers at Eastport YC who help at, and for supporting the event. We would also like to thank Harry at Annapolis Sailing Fitness and Boatyard Bar and Grill for their support of our team during this event.
Team Tunnicliffe
US Boat Santa Maria Cup
