Credit: Sander van der Borch
Credit: Richard Langdon
Credit: Jesús Renedo
Credit: Lloyd Images
Credit: Lloyd Images
Credit: Lloyd Images
Credit: onEdition
Credit: Toby Melville
Credit: Richard Langdon
Friday 13th November, 2009
The December issue of Yachts and Yachting magazine carries an in-depth article on Lucy and her team, and the new Olympic Discipline of Women’s Match Racing.
Find out what the Match Racing circuit is all about, catch up on the girls’ progress, training and aspirations, and see the new Elliott 6m boat which has been selected for the London 2012 Olympics at Portland and Weymouth.
Y&Y is available now from all good news agents, or as an online eZine subscription.
Wednesday 11th November, 2009
After our great win at the Busan Women’s Match last week there has been little time to draw breath, as I have flown straight out to Nice for the Louis Vuitton Trophy. The event is designed to keep the America’s Cup teams racing while the original event is not open to everyone has been a great success so far with eight teams racing, rotating around four boats.
I was lucky enough to be asked to join the umpire team for the event as one of the five observers. The role of the observers is to stand at the back of the racing yachts radioed up in communication with the umpires, and to call the boat’s heading and whether or not we are overlapped with the other boat in tight situations. Sounds easy right? Well it isn’t too bad until you add in the need for us to hang on for dear life as the transoms are swung on full lock by the helmsmen and the scoop fills up with water from the wave that has just passed over your head!
Our final role is to call if and when there is ever any contact between yachts, or as I had it yesterday, between stern and the committee boat (the good thing is it is generally not hard to tell because if there is contact, it’s often going to happen very close to where your standing!).
Despite the occasional fear, so far it has been an amazing experience seeing how the teams work together and operate these power houses of yachts and to see the options the afterguard take in each tactical situation — sometimes not a world apart from the Elliott 6M racing we’ll be back to at the end of the month!
The event website www.louisvuittontrophy.com has up to date information on results, and good live coverage of the racing, but I will try and keep you posted on my experiences too!
Some photos of the action below… the rather fetching fluorescent arm-bands are to help the umpires see our signals!
Lucy
Wednesday 4th November, 2009
News just in from Korea is that the girls have won the overall title :)
Having lost the first match in the finals against Sally Barkow, Team Lucy Macgregor then went on to win the next three in a row to take the title 3–1. Congratulations for not only a great result against top international competition, but also in achieving this with the quite remarkable consistency of conceding defeat in only one match throughout the entire event.
More to follow I’m sure…
Tuesday 3rd November, 2009
After some more shifty racing today we finished the round robin in 1st place after winning all of our races. The highlight was winning against world number 1 ranked Claire Leroy after ripping our spinnaker in two at the first windward mark. We held our nerve and extended enough to defend downwind.
Following the completion of the round robin the race committee went on to complete the semi-finals which we won 3-0 against Anne-Claire Le Berre and her French team. Tomorrow sees us racing the first-to-3-point final against American Sally Barkow and her all British crew, including Lucy’s usual crew member Annie Lush.
The whole team are delighted with our progress so far, with more left in the tank for tomorrow.
An early night now ready for some competitive racing tomorrow!
Nicky and the Team. xxx
