June 27, 2012
Gothenberg, Sweden

Day two of the ISAF Women's Match Race World Championships was another beautiful day, once the wind finally filled in around 11:30am. The sun came out and and the wind settled in around 10-12kts to provide near perfect match racing conditions again. We had three races today against the top seeded teams in our group and won all three races to take our scoreline to 7-0 after the first round robin.

Team Maclaren on their way in after a hard day's racing

Photo: Women's International Match Racing Association 2012

The day started with group B heading out and finishing the four races left in their round. We got to the yacht club around 12:30 and joined the spectators to watch some good match racing. We watched our training partners, Team Audi Match Race (FIN), sail very well and win their group with a 7-0 record too.

We hit the water and around 4:30 we finally got racing. Our first race was against Team Price (AUS). We earned a penalty just before the gun in the prestart for an overly agressive luff. However, we were able to force them over the line resulting in them having to restart and us being in a strong position to the right off the line. Up the course the lead varied in distance as the puffs and shifts jockyed the boats back and forth. We rounded ahead at the top mark and downwind we were able to counter our penalty as she tried to gybe behind us, but ended up hitting us with their spinnaker. We rounded the bottom mark ahead and were able to hold on to the lead through the finish.

Race two was against our American team mates, Team Barkow. They did a great job in the prestart getting two penalties on us, which meant that we had to take one immediatley off the line. We won the pin end off the line, the favoured end, so were able to take our penalty around the end to get racing as fast as possible. Up the first beat, Molly and Debbie did a great job finding the correct shifts, and we clawed our way back to being right behind them at the top mark. Heading downwind, we locked on to their stern out of the mark, which put us into a powerful position to roll over the top of them when they gybed. We did this and were able to make the leeward mark and round ahead. In the first half of the second beat we had a short tacking duel that allowed us to extend our lead just enough so that when the time was right we could spin our remaining penalty and maintain the lead. Both boats were on starboard tack approaching the port layline. They didn't want to sail to layline becuase it was such a long way back into the mark and that would give us the opportunity to extend our lead enough to spin and win. So they tacked shy of the layline. We immediately went into our spin and completed it, coming out in a leebow position. We worked hard at pinching them off and eventually got them to tack. We tacked with them and then back on layline, which extended us enough to hold onto the lead to the finish.

Our final race was against Team Skudina (RUS). It was a close match all around the course, but we were able to hold a one length lead all the way around to finish the series 7-0. We advance to the Gold round. The top four teams from groups A and B will all race each other in another round robin and the top four from that will advance to the semi's. We have tomorrow off as the silver fleet will race their round robin.

You can follow the scores online at the regatta website or on MatchRacingResults.

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, CISA and SDYC 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.