by Anna Tunnicliffe
We have just gotten home from a late day of sailing, finishing up day 1 of US SAILING’s Rolex Miami OCR. Group C completed three races this afternoon hitting the dock at 6pm. We had a good day finishing with three wins in our three races. It was a beautiful day, cloudy, but the wind was up around 12-15kts and mostly flat water. The temperature was in the high 60's/low 70's which made it very pleasant.
The day had a very relaxed start for us. We were not scheduled to race until the other two groups had completed three races each, which meant that we didn't have to leave the house until 12:30pm. We left and got to the club in time, changed and headed out to watch two of group B's races. We wanted to head out so we could see what the wind was doing on the race course to help get us clued in for when it was our turn.
We finally got into our boats, and after a bit of time to get ready we started racing. Our closest match was the last race against Sweden's Anna Kjelberg. In the prestart, we gave her a penalty, we maintained control and led her off the line. Up the first beat we were within half a boat length for a while and then we correctly hit a couple of shifts at the top to extend to a two length lead. Downwind, we sailed the shifts but coming into the leeward mark, Kjelberg rode a puff into us and rounded half a length behind us. Upwind again, we extended on the shifts and continued to increase our lead downwind to cross the line to take the win. At this point the sun was about 30 minutes from setting so the race committee sent us in for the day.
Tomorrow's racing starts at 9:30 for the match racers. Group B will start the day, and we will race second. The plan is for the RC to wrap up the round robins which means four flights for each group. Luckily the forecast is for 10-20kts tomorrow so there should be no problem in getting the races in.
Team Tunnicliffe
RMOCR
