GBR Match Race Girls

A short, successful day for us today as we just had three races in our group and won all three. All the top teams are here in Weymouth for the final leg of the ISAF Sailing World Cup Series so I’m sure it will be an exciting week.

Unfortunately with the groups going on rankings all three GBR boats have ended up in the same group so despite it being an international competition, our first two races were against the teams of Wilson and Archer. A close race for us first off got us into the swing of things and we were pleased to finish with three straight wins when the first round is so important for us in progressing through to the later stages of the event.

Le Berre (FRA) and Tunnicliffe (USA) also won all three of their races in our group so it will all come down to tomorrows racing to see who gets through to gold fleet. We’re scheduled to have our final four races in this group tomorrow about midday.

Take a look at the event website www.skandiasailforgoldregatta.co.uk for full results .

Lucy

It has been a month now since our Elliott’s had their first dip in the water down at the Weymouth and Portland Sailing Academy and since then Ally, Annie and myself haven’t stopped! A weeks hard training getting used to the boats as much as possible led in to the National Championships (and my third National title). It was then straight into the the International event where we did not lose a single race for the whole event. Next up was the Skandia Sail for Gold Regatta, the first true test of Elliott 6ms, in the Olympic Venue and with all the top Match Races and ex-Yngling sailors. Here we were delighted to go through to the finals after an epic day of quarter finals against the Australians (which went to 4 races and then a re-sail), then semi finals against the French World #1 team (which went to 5 matches). However new conditions on Saturday for the finals against the Dutch team saw us disappointed to only manage the Silver medal loosing the finals 2-1. It’s hard to feel happy with a Silver when your gunning for the gold but we realise the three events for us have been fantastic and put us in a very strong position going into our winters training.

After finish racing on Saturday, it was straight into the winters programme at 09.00 on Monday morning! Having competed in 11 International and more Domestic events since January, its time for us to focus on some training at last! Up to Christmas we’ll be based down in Weymouth working with a squad of other British teams. Our main focus for the period will be getting used to the boats in both the boat handling and speed sense, not focusing on Match Racing tactics too much for now. Included in our programme will be plenty of land based fitness training (bring on the hiking bench!) and we’ll be looking to do some fundraising to ensure we can complete a World Class training programme. We’ll hope to finish this period of training with a test in Melbourne, Australia for the first round of next years ISAF World Cup Series.

Finally a quick thank you to all our supporters over the last 8 months, watching us from rocks, on the TV, or on the internet and a huge thank you to the local buisnesses for their support including Jenkins Marine and Quay Sails.

Back to Weymouth for us on Monday morning…think of us as it gets colder!

Keep sailing!

Lucy x