7th Overall at Buddy Melges Challenge for Team Tunncliffe

by Anna Tunnicliffe

It was a day of rain, light wind, fog and big waves today at the Buddy Melges Challenge. Our regatta ended a day earlier than we had hoped as we went 2-2 today to bring our record to 3-4 overall. We had some very close races and lost the last race by inches to decide if we advanced on to the semi's or not. However, we didn't and ended up 7th overall.

We are a bit disappointed as we sailed very well most of the time. We were winning six of the seven races in the quarter finals at some point during the races, but made small mistakes that took us out of the lead.

We are giving ourselves a big debrief this afternoon and taking lots of notes on what we did wrong and what we did right. This was a training regatta for us as we lead into our World Championships starting in ten days, but we were hoping for a slightly better result. But as they say, sometimes you learn more by losing than by winning, so we are taking that to heart and going to learn from our mistakes so that in two weeks time, they won't happen again.

We had three very good races today, two of them against our American teammates, and the last race against Lotte Meldgaard from Denmark. Our first race of the day was against Sally Barkow. She led us at the top mark after we made an error on the layline call. Downwind we caught up to her and she earned a penalty for sailing past her proper course. Up the second beat, we kept the race close so that downwind she wouldn't have the distance needed to burn her penalty. We managed to get to the right of her and set our kite, forcing her to the finish line where we took the race. In our second race with Genny Tulloch, she led us around the top mark.

Downwind we managed to pass her, took control of the race and went on to take the win. After a delay due to fog, we started racing again. We lost our next race; we went to the right off the line as we planned, and Nicky Souter from Australia went left. When the two boats came back together again, we were behind and couldn't quite catch up.

Our final race, however, was the closest race we had all series. We led Lotte off the line and around the course. Up the second beat, we lost three of our four boatlength lead which was going to make for a difficult downwind leg as the wind was dying. She managed to roll us shortly after the rounding, so we split away. We did a couple of gybes at each other and we managed to get back to her. As we came together on the last one, it was a matter of completing the gybe, gaining a bit of speed and soaking across the line. Unfortunately for us she had a bit more speed and crossed just ahead of us.

So, next week we are heading to Noroton for some practice in Sonars before we head to Newport, RI next weekend. We are very excited for the training and the Worlds, and sitting down with our coach and debriefing this regatta.

Tomorrow we will be out cheering on Sally and team in the semi's. You can check the results at the regatta website.

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
Buddy Melges Challenge