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| Tricky First Race in Gold Fleet At Laser Radial Worlds | | Print | |
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July 12, 2010 Largs, Scotland
I had another good day on the water, finishing 2nd in the only race of
the day at the 2010 Radial World Championships. It was the first race in
the Gold fleet racing, and what a tricky race it was.
Launching For Another Race
Photo: (c) Joanna Tunnicliffe, July 2010
The forecasted direction was for a south easterly going south westerly,
but for some reason, here in Largs, the wind doesn't like to go to the east;
rather, it seems to prefer to stay in the north to north east. This
meant that the forecasted wind would happen at some point in the day, it
was just a matter of when. We headed out for racing at the normal time, but found,
once we got out there, the wind swinging through about 50 degrees, so the race committee held off for an hour while the wind stabilized. It finally
settled and we got off a start after three general recalls. In the hour postponement prior to the race, I sailed around to make sure I was
keeping in check with what the wind was doing relative to the clouds that were on
the course. By the time we finally got off the start line, I had a good
feeling as to what I wanted to do on the race course and was able to do it.
I started just down from the boat end of the line, and tacked fairly shortly after the gun. I sailed on port tack (out to the right) for a very long time towards some clouds and then tacked just shy of layline. As I came back across, I wasn't sure I was going to cross the fleet entirely, but the more I sailed towards the mark, the more promising it looked. One boat crossed in front of me, coming in from far left, and the boats that rounded the top mark right behind me also came from the left hand side of the course. At that point, the wind was beginning to drop a little and was starting to swing to the right. Downwind the wind dropped quite a bit as a rain squall started to head our way. Since there were no waves to surf downwind, to occupy myself, I divided my time between the course and a funnel cloud forming over the hills. It almost touched down before it dissipated again, luckily before it got to our race course. I rounded the bottom mark in second place, and from there held on as the wind finally swung to the east and then to the south east for the end of our race. The breeze died completely after the rain squall passed, and the race committee sent us in for the day around 4pm. It felt quite satisfying to start the Gold fleet off with a good result. The plan is to try for three races tomorrow when we have much better breeze forecasted. You can check the results out online at the regatta website. We would like to thank Carmeuse and Trinity Yachts for their continued support of our campaign for the 2012 Olympics in London. We would also like to thank US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics (USSTAG) and its sponsors for their support. Sail Hard, Anna Team Tunnicliffe |
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.
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