Winning streak continues! « GBR Match Race Girls

Winning streak continues!

Wednesday 27th January, 2010

Annie, Ally and my winning streak continued today as we started our Gold fleet round robin and won all three races beating Anna Tunicliffe (USA), Sam Osbourne (NZL) and Nicky Souter’s (AUS) teams. Also taking place today were races for the repechage fleet where two of the six teams will qualify through to join the gold fleet competitors in the quarter finals (the gold fleet round robin is just a method to seed the teams for the quarters).

The conditions today were fantastic, although it was a little chilly at our 8.00am briefing, the land soon warmed up and the 7-10 knot northerly breeze provided good close racing amongst the fleets. Our first race was against Tunicliffe and after leading in to the start in the last minute we were able to secure a strong windward position and match their first few tacks to then gain a comfortable margin for the rest of the race. Next up were the Kiwis and a fairly even pre-start led to us winning the side we wanted but unfortunately pulling the trigger a little early and starting over the line! A quick dip however and we were still hot on their heels up the first beat. Good speed helped us close the margin slightly and then a solid lee-bow tack by us, slowed them and meant on the next tack up to the starboard layline we were crossing their bow. Conservative sailing from then on gave us our second win of the day with one more race to go. The Australians won their group in the first stage so we knew they could be tough competition and with quite a random pre start it was still any one’s game until a call by the umpires (possibly wrongly?) went against them. We were then slightly on the back foot behind them with only 45 seconds until the start and not much time left to kill but a great execution coming up on the starboard layline with her below meant we started on the right, up to speed and with all our options. Matching their tacks up the first beat allowed us to pull ahead more and then extend on every leg to the finish.

Tomorrow the race committee will look to finish all four groups, the repechage, gold, silver and bronze fleet, allowing them to go into quarter finals on Friday. We’re really happy with how we have been sailing so far but are making little mistakes so will definitely be looking to work on those areas tomorrow before Friday’s playoffs.

Until tomorrow, bye for now!