September 18, 2011
Stanford, CA

It's been a while since we've written, but Team Maclaren has been busy training hard in Chicago at the Chicago Match Race Center. We have had two sessions so far there and have one more coming up. We are currently on a four-day break, before we hit the water again on Tuesday. We also had some great news; when the new ISAF world women's match race rankings came out for September, they showed us at #1.

Our training started just a few days after we returned home from the wedding of our fourth team member, Liz Lewin. We all arrived to Chicago on the 8th of this month to start a four-day training session with Claire Leroy and team from France. It worked out very well as they were on their way up to Sheboygan for the Nation's Cup and we were looking for some good training. The conditions the first day in Chicago were quite rough. We had winds in the high teens and huge swells coming in and bouncing off the sea wall, providing the sailing area with quite a washing machine effect. But after that day, the wind died down, the sun came out and the training was beautiful. We spent a considerable amount of time focusing on specific parts of the race, and we feel the training was very productive.

 We had a one-day break, where the girls played tourist in Chicago and I went on the water to watch/coach my husband, Brad Funk, and team in his match race event in which he finished up second. But the next day we were back at our training around noon, this time with Taylor Canfield, Steph Roble and Maggie Shea. Sailing against these guys was very different than the previous week. We primarily focused on starting and it was great practice to sail against someone whom we don't normally race. Seeing slightly different moves and hearing different thoughts on approaches was very interesting and again very instructional. Taylor, Steph and Maggie gave us their time to come and train and we would like to say a huge thanks to them for coming out, even when the temperatures dropped at the end of the week into the 50's as the high.

So now we are on our break. Debbie is at home in Long Island, and Molly and I are at her home in California. I am coaching the Stanford Laser sailors as they get ready for their qualifier next weekend. On Monday night/Tuesday morning, we all head back to Chicago for our final session there for the year. This time we will be sailing against Phil Robertson and team. Phil is ranked top 10 in the ISAF Open Match Race rankings and is also a Match Race Tour card holder. He coached our team in Kiel, Germany earlier this year, and we are now looking forward to sailing against him this coming week.

From there we have about two days off before we head to our next event, the Santa Maria Cup in Annapolis, MD. There we will meet up with the Audi Match Race Team (our Finnish training partners), race the regatta, and then head down to Florida to do some training for the rest of this month and beginning of October as we get ready for the first part of our Olympic Trials.

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, Chicago Match Race Center and Sperry Top-Sider 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.