annatunnicliffe.com - Rochester Match Race Victory

Rochester Match Race Victory

PDF

| Print |

E-mail

Halifax, England - September 16, 2008 - It’s been a busy past couple of weeks, but I finally got back racing last week and it felt good to be at the helm again when I competed in the US Women’s Match Racing Championships in Sonars at the Rochester Yacht Club, in Rochester, NY. I had an excellent team sailing with me; Ali Church, Molly Vandemoer, and Liz Bower. We sailed a very good regatta and came out on top.

We arrived in Rochester late on Tuesday to start practice on Wednesday morning. Heading into the event I had received some boat handling advice from Dean Brenner, US Olympic Team Leader, who sails Sonars a lot. We put his advice into practice on Wednesday and worked our boat handling very hard. We also did a couple pre-starts with fellow competitor Molly Carapiet. This was the first time I had done anything competitive since I finished the Olympic Games, and I was actually shaking with nerves during practice. It felt funny, but it was also good to get my adrenaline flowing before we started racing. At the end of the day on Wednesday, there was an opening ceremony and dinner at Rochester YC.

The competitors’ meeting was quite early on Thursday morning, but that was necessary to squeeze in all of the racing. There were12 teams competing which meant that the race committee had a lot of work to do get in all the races required. The regatta opened with a single round robin in which all 12 teams raced each other. Our team completed seven races the first day and compiled a successful record of 7-0. In most other match racing events, we have usually started with lower seeded teams and then worked our way through the rotation to the top seeded teams. However, this time, we were matched against Liz Baylis, the World Match Racing Championship silver medalist, so the pressure was on right from the get-go. It got us focusing straight away!

The next day we finished up the round robin and split into a gold/silver fleets. We had wrapped up the first round with an 11-0 score but when we got into the gold fleet round our performance fell off. We made some silly mistakes that cost us a couple of races and were just outsailed in others. After the first day of gold fleet racing we had a 2-3 record which put us in a four-way tie for third. What’s more the forecast for the next day was for very light weather which left some uncertainty about how the format might be changed to complete the series. Fortunately the gold fleet completed the second scheduled round robin before the wind died for the day. We lifted our game a little to finish with a 3-2 record, putting us in third place going into the quarter-finals.

The next day we were greeted with a 10-20 knot offshore breeze, the conditions we had been looking forward to. We raced Katy Pilley-Lovell in the quarter finals. She had defeated us in the semi-finals at last year’s competition so we were ready to redeem ourselves. We sailed two very good races and our 2-0 record advanced us to meet Liz Baylis and her team in the semi’s.

We were really looking forward to racing Liz because we’d enjoyed some excellent racing against her team in the previous days. Our contest stretched to three very tight races. In the first race, we drew a penalty in the pre-start, but managed to get far enough ahead by the second beat to burn it off and go on to win. My timing was wrong for the second match and I slowed at the start when I should have been going full speed. Although we were slightly behind off the line we stayed in touch for the first two legs. We rounded the leeward mark well to roll into a tack and then climb close to Liz as we sailed out to the layline. We eventually got in front of her, but by then we were both overstood and very far past the layline. When we tacked, she held us high until we sailed over her. By that time we were both above the windward mark and had to sail downwind back to the mark. We just lost our overlap at the time we hit the two-boat length circle and it was enough distance for Liz to round ahead and retain the lead until the finish. In the third race we had a clean start, led Liz off the line and extended to wrap up the semis 2-1.

In the finals we met Genny Tulloch and team. Our regatta record against Genny was 1-2 but we all wanted the win and were feeling confident in our boat handling and team work. The first start against Genny was close but we worked ahead in the shifty conditions to win. In the second race, we led off the line and again took advantage of the shifty conditions to take the championship.

The race committee ran 148 races in four days, and all of them were fantastic fair races. Rochester YC looked after us all very well. Liz Bower’s parents were great hosts to our team, so a big thanks to Sandy and Kirk. I also have to again congratulate my teammates who worked together so well and were fantastic in that they made my job very easy in the back of the boat…thanks girls!!!

Winning this event advances our team to compete in the Nations Cup Regional Finals. The Nations Cup is a worldwide event where each nation or continent gets to send a representative to compete. The series for the North American region will be held in Charleston in November and we will be competing against other countries like Canada and Bermuda.

As soon as the USWMRC awards were over I hopped on a plane to fly to England and visit my grandparents and other relatives. On Friday I head for Spain to start practicing for the Snipe Women’s World Championships held in Roquetas al Mar from September 24-28. I am sailing with Kathleen Tocke. I will send another update before the event starts with a link to the website.

Anna

Team Member

Olympic Gold Medalist and #1-Ranked Woman Laser Radial Sailor

Representing the USA, Anna Tunnicliffe won the Gold Medal in the Women's Laser Radial dinghy at the 2008 Olympic Games in Qingdao, China. Anna has been the world's Number One-ranked women's Radial sailor for most of the past 16 months after returning to the top spot in the ISAF April 9, 2008 rankings.