January 27, 2012
Miami, Fl

Two quick race wins this morning wrapped up our 2012 US Sailing's Rolex Miami OCR with a 5th place overall finishing position. It wasn't the goal coming into the regatta, but given our elimination yesterday, we are happy to have finished as high as we could.

Our day started against Team Mulder from The Netherlands. We had a close first upwind leg after a split start off the line. We were to the right and she was to the left. We had a few close encounters as we came together and she leebowed us forcing us to tack away, but on the fourth time together, we were able to hold to windward and pin her to the port layline. After that we were able to extend our lead and take the race to advance to the 5th-6th sail-off race against Team Echegoyan from Spain.

This race wasn't quite as close as we were able to get them to tack out off the line and from there, we extended our lead to take the race and 5th place overall.

After we were done, we stayed out to watch the exciting matches that took place in the semi finals. Both match-ups presented very close racing with GBR's Team Macgregor and Australia's Team Price coming out on top to advance to the finals. Our USSTAG teammates, Team Barkow will be up against Finland's Team Audi Match Race for 3rd/4th places.

We are taking a short break after Monday. Over this weekend we will be training with Team Audi getting them ready for their Olympic qualifying regatta, the last chance to qualify their nations for the Olympic Games.

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.