GBR Match Race Girls

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!

Another great day for us today as we finished our group round robin 1st — without dropping a single race!

We are definitely through to the quarter finals, but will start a gold group round robin tomorrow to determine the positions for the quarter final play-offs. We’ll keep you posted!

Lucy x

A strong start for us on day one with 4 wins out of 4!

After a really good race against Mandy Mulder’s team (NED) where we gave them a penalty on the first beat, the rumours of a big storm spread and we were brought in off the water for an hour and a half before finally getting out again around 3pm for 3 more races. Our next win was against the Finnish team of Chita Wahlroos, and then we had some excitement in our third race when during the pre-start Uli Schuemann’s team (GER) got stuck on the anchor of the committee boat and then later in the race were black flagged (disqualified) to prevent further damage to their boom which was damaged in the hit. So a quiet race for us there, and then into our final race of the day against the American team helmed by Katie Lovell. During the pre start we were able to give them a penalty and then with Ally calling us up to the line we had a good start and extended from there!

Tomorrow the Race Committee will start group C first for 4 matches and then we’ll be out again from around 11.00 for the final 3 races of our round robin. With 3 teams all on 4 wins at the moment, I’m sure it’ll be an exciting day!

For full results go to http://rmocr.ussailing.org/Results.htm, or look out for updates on the RolexMiamiOCR Twitter feed.