June 9, 2012
Weymouth, UK

We won the bronze medal today at the 2012 Skandia Sail for Gold regatta after defeating Team Skudina (RUS) in a one race petit finals. Our third place finish also gave us the ISAF Sailing World Cup Women's Match Racing title for the second year running.

Photo: copyright Mick Anderson/SailingPix.dk 2012

After yesterday's cancellations of racing, the start today was scheduled for 8am. We were allowed to leave and head out at 7:20am for the race course and racing started on time with the quarterfinals. Because of the time constraints of the day (racing not allowed to start after 3:30pm), all of the series were shortened to fit it all in. Both the quarterfinals, semi's and finals were a first to two point series, and the petit finals were first to one point series.

Our quarterfinals were against our training partners Team Audi Match Race (FIN). We had two come-from-behind wins against them to take the series. They were great races, but two small mistakes by Finland in each race allowed us to pass them and take the wins and the series.

In the semi's we were up against Team Leroy (FRA). They sailed a really solid series and this time we made a few mistakes of which they took advantage and took the series 2-0 over us.

The petit finals, a winner-takes-all race, was a great race for the first lap. Off the line, we started to windward of Skudina. We eventually had to tack off and she tacked with us. We managed to worked her off our hip and we tacked back with her. Finaly we ended up on split tacks. On one intersection, she ended up hitting us as she tried to go behind us and earned a penalty. At the top mark we rounded ahead by a length. Downwind we had a good battle and at the bottom she ended up running into us as we rounded the bottom mark, earning a second penalty. With her having to do one penalty immediatley, it opened up the race and we were able to hold an 8-length lead to the finish line and the bronze medal. (Photo: Skandia Sail For Gold 2012)

Overall it was a bit of a tough week for us. We struggled early on and had to fight back. We learned a lot about ourselves this week and had a great debrief this evening figuring it all out.

Tomorrow we fly home for a few days before returning to Weymouth for a week of training before we head to Sweden for our World Championships.

We would very much like to thank our Title Sponsor, Maclaren, our Gold Level Sponsors 11th Hour Racingand Laser Performance, and our Bronze Level Sponsors Carmeuse, Trinity Yachts, Chicago Match Race Center, and Sperry Top-Siderfor their continued support of our campaign for the 2012 Olympic Games. We would also like to thank St Francis Sailing Foundation, and US Sailing Team Sperry Top-Sider 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 to Sailing Foundation of New York, in the memo write 'Anna Tunnicliffe' and send to Sailing Foundation of New York (this one is tax deductible); or to Anna Tunnicliffe (via PayPal). (Please follow the links for more information. Thank you.)

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.