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| OCR, Miami: Great Start On Day 1 | | Print | |
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January 25, 2010
Miami, FL
We started racing around 10:15 this morning at the US Sailing Rolex Miami OCR. The cold front that was scheduled to blow through in the early
afternoon was looming on the other side of the bay. And so, because it was moving in a more northerly direction than easterly, we sailed along the edge of the
dark clouds and completed our scheduled three races for the day. It was a
great day for us, and we were very happy with how things turned out. We
started the round 3-0 and will race another four races to complete our round tomorrow afternoon.
Anna Tunnicliffe and Molly Vandemoer
throw Y-flags during racing today
Photo: copyright Walter Cooper , January 2010
There are 24 teams competing at the event, divided into three groups of eight. The groups are divided based on the current ISAF World Rankings.
We are ranked #10 in the ISAF rankings, and ended up being the #7 seed team
for this event. The groups are divided as follows: ISAF #1 ranked in group
A, ISAF #2 ranked in group B, ISAF #3 and #4 ranked in group C, ISAF #5 in group A, and so on. For this reason, we are in group A. In order for each boat to sail every day, the race committee limited the number of races in each group per day. So for today, groups B and C were scheduled to sail 4 races each this afternoon, and will then do
their other three each tomorrow, after which we will finish our last 4. It's a bit confusing at
first, but once you've see it on the schedule they've given us, it makes much
more sense. (Check out the results' page to get a better idea.)
TeamTunnicliffe Leading The Israelis In To The Mark
Photo: copyright Walter Cooper, January 2010
The promised storm did eventually come in, but not until group B had completed
one of its four races. The storm forced the race committee to send in the sailors, as there were reports of waterspouts in the surrounding waters and wind
gusts up to 50kts. Better to be safe than sorry. The teams were only on
shore for a brief period, before the front passed and they could resume
racing. I'm not sure where they are in the schedule as we left the YC, but I'm
sure all three groups will have gotten in some racing today. (Actually, as it turned out, group B completed its 4 races but group C didn't get in any racing - short on time.)
Our races were held in 15-17kts and a short chop. Because we were
sailing along the edge of the storm clouds, the shifts were quite frequent,
but Molly and Debbie did a great job of putting us in the correct place
relative to our competitor to make the necessary gains. Our pre-starts were quite
quick
and aggressive, and were a great indicator of how our work on boat
handling has been going. We are very happy with where we are at, but are now at
the point of nit-picking little things to make it even more smooth.
We had one exciting pre-start with the Israeli team. We were trailing
them back towards the start line with too much time left for them to start cleanly if they kept going. With about 40 seconds left, we hooked them
to leeward and forced them to tack. This was a bit of a mistake on our
part because we did it too close to the committee boat so that if we wanted
to tack with them, we would get ourselves pinned between them and the committee boat, resulting in us not being able to start. We didn't tack because we realized this, and instead gybed around at them, to try and catch them
before they got a gybe in. Well, they managed to get their gybe in to starboard,
and although we were trying to avoid them, I chose the wrong direction to
avoid them, thus putting ourselves across their path. This was a big mistake by
me, and resulted in us getting a penalty. But, we cleared our heads, gybed around behind them and hooked them to leeward and drew a penalty right
back on them 10 seconds after the start to even the penalties out. We
engaged them in a tacking dual upwind, and managed to get control of the righthand side of the course
and passed them about half way up the beat. From there, we just had to sail
smart and stay out of trouble, which we did and went on to win the race.
We are very happy with how our day went. We have done loads of practice over the last couple of weeks, working on improving our communication and our
plays. Today, save my one big mistake, was a great day for our team.
Everything went quite smoothly. We are looking forward to racing again tomorrow
and finishing up the round robin. You can check out the results for the
regatta here.
We would like to thank our sponsors, Carmeuse and USSTAG, for their
continued support towards our
campaign for the 2012 Olympics, and we look forward to being able to
name other sponsors in our future daily reports.
Sail Hard, Anna
Team Tunnicliffe
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Team Member
Anna: "To achieve our goals, we need 4D's:
Dream, Desire, Dedication, Discipline"
TM
Olympic Gold Medalist, World Class Woman Laser Radial Sailor And Now World Class Women's Match Racer
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.
Useful Links to help raise
the level of your match racing game: