GBR Match Race Girls

Here we are in the event hospitality tent ready to start racing on day two of the European Championships, and it is absolutely chucking it down with rain outside! Ally, Annie and I are on after two races in which group B will complete their first round robin. Yesterday we finished our first round robin in 2nd place with 3 wins and 2 losses, and today we will be racing the same five teams again in another round robin.

Conditions were tricky yesterday with light and very shifty winds, today we have the wind but also the rain to go with it! We struggled a bit yesterday with getting used to the boats, the boat handling of the asymmetric kite and the way they handle at low speed, but it was a common problem among the fleet and we feel we have made some good progress in our debrief. Of course it’s a new day today though with 5–10 knots more breeze so plenty more learning to do!

We’ll keep you posted,

Lucy

Update: the results show the girls winning 4 out their 5 matches today, losing only to Lotte Meldgaard (DEN). They finish the round robin 7–3, the same as Meldgaard, but today’s defeat means on the tie-break they slip to 3rd.

Racing is due to start at 10.00am here in Hard, Austria for the 2010 Women’s European Match Racing Championships and Ally, Annie and I are just having a cup of coffee and preparing to go out on the water.

As was the case last year, the Europeans this year is taking place alongside the Open event (nice for us to have some men around for a change!) and also like last year, the women have got the raw end of the deal with the boats we’ll be using compared to the men!

This week we’ve left the Elliott notes at home and will be starting a new page for Scholtz 22s. So far the three of us have spent just two hours in the boat which was yesterday during our allocated training slot and while we tried to find out as much as we could about them but I’m sure there is plenty more to learn! Unlike the Olympic Elliott 6m class we’ve been putting all our time into recently, the Scholtz carries an asymmetric spinnaker and is slightly more of a ‘keelboat’. I have to admit we weren’t overwhelmed with love for the boat, but there isn’t much we can do about that other than get our heads down and race and move forward as much as possible with our boat handling and speed through the early rounds.

The event will start today with a round robin series in two groups and throughout the week will move onto another round robin in our groups, followed by quarters, semis then finals on Saturday.

Hard is situated in the Austrian corner of Lake Constance and the race areas we’ll be using will be a mixture of inside the “Binnenbecken” harbour (an area no bigger than Poole Park Lake) and the other course will be outside on the main lake which will hopefully be a little less shifty!

Today we’re inside on the little lake, sailing our first round robin against Lotte Meldgaard (DEN), Renee Groeneveld (NED), Ekaterina Skudina (RUS), Petra Kliba (CRO), and Vesna Dekleva Paoli (SLO).

Wish us luck — it could be a venue where we need a little!

Lucy x