annatunnicliffe.com - 4th At Act 5, Extreme 40s Sailing, Wales

4th At Act 5, Extreme 40s Sailing, Wales

September 3, 2012
London, UK

The boats are all packed up in containers and off to their next location. Racing ended around 5pm yesterday (Sunday) and it was straight to derigging the boats and pulling them out of the water. We had a great event, finishing just 3 points shy of the podium after 32 races, but it was a great step forward for our team, Team GAC Pindar, and we are looking forward to the next event in the Extreme Sailing Series in Nice, France.

GAC Pindar Storming Into A Mark

Photos: GAC Pindar (Facebook)

The day's racing was held in slightly less wind than the past three days but with the wind being a little more left than it had been, it allowed for a bit more windward-leeward legs in the racing. The racing, as always, was very close with only points separating the top four boats going into the last double points race.

We started the day very well with a 2, 2, 3, moving us up to second place in the standings. We had a bit of bad luck on the next start as we lost our wind on the line and therefore, had to fight to get back in the race. We pulled back and had a few more good results to keep us in it. The penultimate race, we ended up getting a penalty while in 4th position causing us to lose a lot of boats and dropping us down on Team Red Bull by 7 points. Going into the last race we knew we had to pull off a good one, and it was possible. But again, the start wasn't as good as it could have been and this meant that we were again in the back of the pack. Fortunately, Team Red Bull was OCS at the start and had to return to the line, and as a result, were back with us with one boat between us. We pushed hard to try and catch the boats in front of us, but came up a little short and fell 3 points out of a podium position.

Overall, for me, the experience was great and the boys did a fantastic job with the boat handling which gave us a big advantage. We have made a few notes on where work is needed, and we can practice these areas before we head into the next event in Nice in the middle of October. You can check out the overall results at the regatta website.

I am going to be visiting relatives in the UK and sponsor Carmeuse in Belgium, for the rest of this week, and this time will give me an opportunity to rest my knee before I head back home to the USA to start training again.

Sail Hard,

Anna

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

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

...Passion

...Progression

...Perfection ^TM

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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