GBR Match Race Girls

Sorry for the lack of updates, but the good news is that its been another fantastic few days for us in Weymouth. With Ally back from illness the three of us competed against 11 other of the the top international teams in a three day warm up event for Sail for Gold, and are delighted to have finished the event winning overall with a clean sheet!

After some exciting, close races on day 1 during the round robin, we made life a little easier for ourselves on day 2 winning our remaining round robin races with a bit of a gap and qualifying through to the quarter finals. Here we faced Julie Bossard’s team (FRA) and won our first two races comfortably. Day three saw a different day with a shifty NE breeze and a race committee very eager to get races in. Our final race of the quarters went well putting us through to the semis against Katie Spithill’s team (AUS). Despite close pre-starts and some pressure downwind on the first race, we sailed well to win 2–0 and go through to the finals against the NED team helmed by Renne Groeneveld. We knew the Dutch would be quick and sure enough even though we won the starts well, in both races of the finals we had them breathing down our necks the whole race. However, we managed to successfully hold them off, winning the second race by less than half a length to take the finals by 2–0 and the overall title.

Going into this regatta, the result was not too important to us, we just wanted to use it to learn as much as possible in preparation for Skandia Sail for Gold. But to win the event, and to do it having not dropped a single race, we now feel really confident going into the racing next week. We’ve now spent a couple of weeks training and one week racing (admittedly all in good breeze) in the boats, and although sleep is high on the list of things to do right now, we are really looking forward to racing next week! The new Elliotts are holding up to the challenge very well so far, and have produced some high quality close racing. However, next week with 24 teams racing in 8 Elliotts at the newly completed Olympic venue will be the true test… bring it on!

Lucy x

Tags: 2009, Elliott 6M, Weymouth

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