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| IWKC - Pre-Regatta Report | | Print | |
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October 6, 2009
Rochester, NY
Tonight is the eve of the International Women’s Keelboat Championships here in Rochester, NY. We are sailing J/22’s and racing is scheduled to start tomorrow and continues through Saturday. There are 36 teams competing from five countries, including USA, CAN, NED, RSA, and GBR. On top of the international competition, there is a wide age range in the competitors, with the oldest competitor being 80 years old and the youngest being 10 years old. I am sailing with my team of Liz Bower, Molly Vandemoer, and Debbie Capozzi. 
Last Minute Boat Prep
Photo: Joanna Tunnicliffe, Oct 2009
Leading into the event, Liz and I participated
as coaches in the Rolex Next Step program. It is a program designed
to introduce young girls into keelboat sailing. We had 23 girls
sailing with us from all over the country. In total we had 6 boats
sailed by the girls and one coach per boat. We had two days of
fantastic wind for the girls to master their boat handling. By
the end of the two days, the boat handling was fantastic and the girls
were ready to compete in this week’s event, if they wanted to.
One of the teams that participated in the program is competing in the
event. Debbie and Molly showed up on the last
day of the clinic and we have had a chance to get in a bit of practice
since then. We had a lot of boat work to do to get the boat set
up the way we wanted, but finally got it all done and had some good
practice.
Helen Ingerson (94yrs young)
One of the Founders of This Regatta
Photo: Joanna Tunnicliffe, Oct 2009
This morning we were asked to get up
early and be on the 7am morning show on the local ABC TV station.
We showed up to see two J/22’s out sailing already being videoed as
the reporter introduced the event. We were interviewed for a couple
minutes just as the sun was beginning to rise.
The good thing about waking up that early allowed us to get our workouts in and wrap up the last minute boat work. When we were finally done, we headed out for the practice race. Given that none of us had fleet-raced in a while, having only match raced, we were joking about what we had to do with “so many other boats” on the start line. We figured it out, and had two good starts. The conditions were light with the wind slowly building through out the race. I will write a report tomorrow night about how the day went. They will also have live tracking that you can follow on the event website .
Sail Hard,
Anna
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Team Member
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 was the ISAF world's Number One-ranked women's Radial sailor from April 9, 2008 to May 2010. She was voted 2009 & 2011 ISAF Rolex World Sailor of the Year. Now Anna, skipper of Team Maclaren, has teamed up with Molly O'Bryan Vandemoer and Debbie Capozzi to take on the world and go for Gold in 2012 London Olympic Games in Women's Match Racing and the team is currently ranked #1 in the ISAF WMR rankings.
