annatunnicliffe.com - 2011 Santa Maria Cup Began Today

2011 Santa Maria Cup Began Today

September 28, 2011
Annapolis, MD

After a slow start to the day, due to lack of wind, we began to head out to the race course around 10am for the start of racing at the 2011 Santa Maria Cup here in Annapolis, MD. It was a slow sail out to the race course, but the wind slowly filled in and was solid by the time racing got underway around 11am. The race committee did a great job of keeping up with the shifting breeze, its increases and decreases, and all the boat rotations to get in 8 flights (each flight consists of 4 races) by 6pm when they called it a day. Team Maclaren had a good day and finished with an 8-0 record leading into tomorrow's racing.

Photo: (copyright) Walter Cooper 2011

Sailing began a little adventurously for us, however. On the sail out, we noticed that the forestay looked to have something sticking out from it up near where it connects to the mast. At first we thought it may be a small piece of string, but we concluded from its lack of movement that it was probably a strand of the forestay wire unraveling. We flew our break down flag as we approached the racing area and asked for a bosun's chair, but there was none on the water. So Debbie and I tied the spinnaker halyard into a chair and I climbed the mast to cut off the strand of forestay so it wouldn't rip our kite. We managed to sort it all out, and then we got down to the racing.

We had a couple of close races today, but nothing really too exciting. The course had mostly steady winds, so the boats were always within a few lengths of each other which ensured that making the correct decision was a 'must' with little chance of recovery from a mistake.

I think the forecast for tomorrow is similar to today's, so hopefully we will get a lot more racing. I think the intended plan is for us to finish up the second round robin and start the quarterfinals. You can check out the results at the regatta website: http://www.santamariacup.org/index.asp.

As always, Team Maclaren would very much like to thank our Title Sponsor, Maclaren, Gold Level Sponsors 11th Hour Racing and Laser Performance, and Bronze Level Sponsors Carmeuse, Trinity Yachts, Chicago Match Race Center and Sperry Top-Sider for their continued support of the team's campaign for the 2012 Olympic Games. Thank you also to US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics (USSTAG) and its sponsors for their continued support. And a special big thank you to Boatyard Bar and Grill for their support of the team during this event. Also, thank you to all private donors. Please remember that any and all donations/contributions to their 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,

Anna
Team Maclaren

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.

Anna: 4D's: "Dream,Desire,Dedication,Discipline"^TM

Team Maclaren: 3P's: Passion...Performance...Perfection...^TM

...Passion
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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.

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