August 11, 2011
Chicago, IL

We are sailing Tom 28's, which means we had to pick up two more crew. Joining us, we have Liz Bower and Dana Riley. We have all sailed these boats once before, so hopping in for practice today didn't take too long to figure out the boat handling. The biggest difference we find from sailing the Elliott 6m, apart from the Tom 28's being 8 feet longer, is that they are a much heavier boat and getting used to how the boat turns and moves is challenging, but we are getting a feel for it, and it's all part of the challenge.

The racing is held off of Navy Pier in downtown Chicago in conjunction with a Tall Ship event. The idea is to provide stadium seating to watch the racing close up. Today, even though it was a practice day, there were hundreds of people who came and watched for a while.

We had a great three hour practice in beautiful weather, ran home for a quick shower before heading back to Navy Pier for the evening's press conference where all of the skippers were introduced. Our hosts for the weekend, Meghan and Pat, who are generously loaning us use of their fabulous apartment, met us after the press conference and we all went to a great Chicago style pizza place where we had a good dinner. (Good thing we weighed in this morning).

Tomorrow racing starts at 9am after an 8am skippers' meeting/umpire's briefing. The forecast is for temperatures in the low 80's with a southerly wind of 10-20mph.

More information, results etc can be found on the event's website: http://chicagocup.org/

We would very much like to thank our Title Sponsor, Maclaren, our Gold Level Sponsors 11th Hour Racing and Laser Performance, and our Bronze Level Sponsors Carmeuse, Trinity Yachts, and Chicago Match Race Center for their continued support of our campaign for the 2012 Olympic Games. We would also like to thank US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics (USSTAG) and its sponsors for their continued support. Also, thank you to our private donors. Please remember that any and all donations/contributions to our campaign should be made payable directly to either The Sailing Foundation of New York (tax deductible) memo'd Anna Tunnicliffe, or to Anna Tunnicliffe.

Sail Hard,

And as usual, don't forget, email us your questions and comments.  We love getting them and sharing our love of sailing and women's match racing.