Yesterday was the first day of racing at the Perth 2011 ISAF World Sailing Championships. We had a great start with three wins in our three races.

I apologize for the delay with the blog but we didn't get off the water until 7:15pm last night and then had to do our recovery program, which in itself led to a late night. Oh, and we tried to get into the INXS concert, playing at the regatta village, in our sailing gear right after getting off the boat...needless to say, we weren't allowed in.

Anyway, on to racing. We started our day with weigh-in at our yacht club. Then there was a meeting for all match race competitors at 10am. Following the meeting, the first eight teams from group A headed to the boats and sailed out to the river. We were not scheduled to race until 3pm, so we headed home for a bit before returning to the docks to watch some races.

We finally got into our boats around 4pm but then waited for an hour as the wind switched directions, and two cargo ships left the harbour. So racing got going around 5:15pm. We had three three-lap races across the river and shipping channel. The wind was quite squirly as it dropped down over the sheds on to the river but it certainly made the racing very exciting. We also had a cargo ship limiting the space we had in the start area, keeping the prestarts close and tight.

Our first race was against Lotte Meldegard, DEN. We had a good pre-start and won the pin end as she went off the line at the boat end. We took the first cross by a few lengths and took the race. The next race was against Jinnie Gordon, CAN.  We led the race off the line, and as we were heading up for the third lap, they went to the finish line. Because they only sailed two of the three laps, we won that race too.

Our final race was against Renata Decnop, BRA. We didn't have the best start, on her hip on port off the line, and were forced to tack away. We found the next left hand shift and closed the gap, ducked her and took the right. We hit the next right shift and rolled over her on starboard as she tried to leebow us. She kept it close on the first downwind leg as she got the puffs right before us and closed in on us but on the second beat we were able to leg it out and slowly stretched the distance between us to take the race. 

Today is a day off for us as group B starts racing. However, apparently there was a ship fire last night just up from our boat yard, so racing was been delayed 45 mins. We are off to watch some of their racing when it gets underway and to cheer on our USSTAG teammates, Team Tulloch.

You can check on the regatta website for results and a live blog: Perth 2011 ISAF Sailing World Championships(http://www.perth2011.com/) (FYI: Perth/Freemantle is 13hr ahead of EST in the States or UTC+8hr)

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.