by Anna Tunnicliffe
It was a beautiful day for sailing here in Bermuda at the 2010 Argo Group Gold Cup. But for us it was a bit of a tough one. Despite sailing quite well, we fell to 0-3 to start off the regatta, and feel a little sad about it.
We didn't start racing until about 2pm, but watched some of the racing that took place before us. Finally our group hit the water. We were first start and felt a little rushed heading into the starting box. We had a pretty good pre-start with Johnnie Berntsson from Sweden, but he ended up getting the better of us in the first acceleration and with the shifty conditions, he extended and won the race.
Our second race was against Alvaro Marinho from Portugal. We entered the start as the blue boat, and were avoiding him in the pre-start until he all of a sudden headed at us. We quickly crash tacked and managed to avoid, but both boats flew a flag and the penalty was on us. It was unfortunate because after the race, the umpires told us they made a mistake and that we shouldn't have gotten the penalty. But later in the start we made a silly mistake and hit the pin giving us a second penalty that we had to spin immediately after the start. The girls sailed us very well around the course and we caught up to Marinho on the second upwind leg to be neck and neck with him, but couldn't quite get around him and he held on for the win. We were a bit upset by this race, but we were happy with our speed so we moved on and got ready for the last race of the day.
Our last race was against Australia's Torvar Mirsky. We had a great pre-start against him and had him pinned until we needed to head back to the start line. We led him back to the line and then pushed him to the right corner of the course after the start. We tacked away and then came back to tack on his line so he would be right behind us on the layline. But then Hamilton Harbor played games with us. We started to get knocked, so we decided to keep the boat rumbling and put the bow down a little. But at the same time, he got a lift, so we ended up sailing diverging courses which then allowed him to get into a controlling position on the course and had us pinned to the port layline.
It was one of the weirdest things I have ever seen in a boat race, and we were on the wrong side of it unfortunately. At the top mark we rounded right behind him. He gybe-set and looked very slow, so we decided to set and then gybe. Just as we gybed ,however, his pressure filled in and he pulled ahead and we couldn't catch up again.
All in all, it was a bit of a frustrating day. We weren't sailing terribly badly, but again, made small mistakes here and there, and when you are sailing guys this good, you can't make those mistakes. Tomorrow we have two races around mid day. We are looking forward to those races to see if we can put what we learned today into practice tomorrow.
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
Royal Bermuda Yacht Club
Argo Group Gold Cup
World Match Racing Tour
