Ft. Lauderdale
April 28, 2008

I'm so sorry for the delay in this wrap up of the Semaine Olympique Francais regatta. My computer broke on Friday night on my way home to the USA and I finally got it back up and running today. Unfortunately I lost my whole hard drive. Anyway, I can now give you a debrief of the regatta. The regatta ended very well and I finished 2nd overall after a very tight medal race.

Sailing in on Day 3 of Hyeres (the 30kt day)

You got the reports up through the first day of gold fleet racing, and then a summary of how I did overall. The second day of gold fleet racing had similar conditions to the day before with a little less wind and a lot more chop. You could definitely compare the conditions to China. We sat around for most of the day waiting for the wind to settle down and fill in. Around 1:30pm, it started to cooperate and we were sent out on the water around 2pm. We started our first race at about 3pm in light conditions. I had a great start and sailed a good first beat rounding the first mark in about 12th place. I passed one boat on the reach and then the wind shifted and so the downwind leg was instead a broad reach, so no passing was really possible. However, I sailed a great second beat and passed 5 more boats to finish in 6th place in the race. After an initial scare of being OCS after a number that was one digit off from mine was posted on the race committee OCS board, I later saw that that number was actually a real number in my fleet. The second race took a lot of work to finish 5th. I started and had a good start. I sailed out to the right hand side of the course where I had planned to go. Well, lets just say it didn't work out so great and I rounded the top markin 31st with 8 boats behind me. I didn't panic too much because I knew that I still had a very good drop race of an 11, so at worst I would be counting an 11 for the race. But with a lot of scanning the other fleet sailing on our course I decided that the right really was going to work on the second beat and it did. I rounded the weather mark in 5th place which was where I finished the race.

To add to a good day, my competitors struggled a little in the conditions which allowed me to jump from 4th going into the race to 2nd going into the medal race. Sarah Blanck (AUS), despite having a 15th in the first race, ended up only counting a 2,2 because of the way her drop race was, and went into the last day with a comfortable lead of 18 points. Evi Van Acker (BEL) dropped back to 3rd ahead of Xu Lijia (CHN) who dropped back to 5th. Natalie Brugger (SUI) moved up into the 4th spot. Despite Sarah being launched in the scores, the rest of us were close enough to have to keep an eye on each other. I had a 7 point lead on Evi, who had a 7 point lead on Natalie. The worst I could get was 4th overall, so I didn't worry about knowing the points after that.

Staying warm and hanging out in the boat park

The forecast for the medal race was light air again. We were fourth race of the day on our course so I had a great opportunity to watch the other fleets race. I had a good start and had Evi on my hip and Natalie below me. Natalie ended up having to tack out to the right and a little while later, Evi was forced to go off of my hip. I struggled with my speed a little for some reason, and ended up not staying ahead of either of them in the race. However, despite Evi's charge late in the race, the rest of the fleet was just enough in front of her that she ran out of race course to catch them. She finished 5th in the race and I finished in 8th. Going into the race I knew that the maximum boats between us could have been 2 and so I focused really hard on keeping only two between us at the finish. With this, I just held onto 2nd place overall by one point. Sarah finished 4th in the race to clinch the overall win.

It felt good to medal in a major international event in Europe. It was my goal to place top 3 in the event, and I'm very happy with my performance.

I had a good flight home and have been running errands for the last couple of days. I'm heading to Clearwater tomorrow to make sure all of the final preparations are in place for the wedding in 12 days. Whilst I'm over there I'm going to do some training with Lisa Ross (CAN). After the wedding I have a couple of days to relax before I head to Holland for the Delta Lloyd Regatta in Mendemblik at the end of the Month. From there, I'm home for a week before I'm off to China for two and a half weeks of training.

I would like to thank Carmeuse and K-Swiss for their continued support of my campaign.

Sail hard,
Anna