Archive for September, 2009

Tough lessons learned at Skandia Sail for Gold in Weymouth

We finished tied for tenth this week in Weymouth at the Skandia Sail for Gold Regatta, and learned a lot of lessons along the way.  We learned a lot about the conditions, that we can expect to see a good mix of everything, and that it can really blow here.  We also learned the hard way the lesson that it’s really important to win the early races in a round robin. Sadly we lost our very first race, after leading around the windward mark by about 3-4 boat lengths, when our spinnaker wrapped in our topping lift badly enough that we had to end up cutting the line away with a knife.  The boat behind was able to get by us and stay ahead for the win, and that boat ended up beating us in the round robin and qualifying for the quarterfinals.  In the initial format we would have easily qualified for the repechage and a chance to make the quarterfinals, but as we lost almost two days to no racing because of high breeze, the race officers cut down the repechage round from 9 teams qualifying through to only 3, and we didn’t make it.  Sad, because we sailed some great races, and had a lot of fun in the one race in breeze that we actually got to sail (20-25 gusting over 30 knots).
We saw two different course areas, first the outside course(which is meant to be the site of match racing for the games), where we spent two great days of practice and sailed our first three races.  This course is tucked into a cove in the outer bay, and has a lot of wave action, both swell and chop, and even a little backwash of waves from the beach.  We’ve been told that there will be bleachers set up on the cliffs/beach here for spectators to watch, and that this will also be the medal racecourse for the other fleets.  It was definitely a shifty venue, with a little bit of accelerated wind coming off the cliffs, making the left slightly favored, which is fun for evening up a match race where the right side starboard advantage is often so huge.

We also got to see the inside course, for when its too windy/wavy to sail outside, and we raced four races in everything from 7-30 knots on this inner course, near the harbor and under the tankers.  Our one race that we got to sail in real breeze was an entertaining adventure, trying to keep the pre-start simple and not break too much, giving our opponent a red flag penalty at the start, hiking our butts off upwind and hanging on downwind with the kite up, where we couldn’t get our weight far enough off the back of the boat, skidding around the leeward mark for a second upwind, where our mainsheet block broke and Sally had to trim the main from the boom, and then a second downwind in even more breeze where Debbie literally almost went underneath and behind the tiller to get her weight far enough back.  We crossed the line ahead and were sent back into the harbor, and then see any racing at all the next day due to breeze, before finally getting back out on the water again.
We had a hard final day of three races against top seeds in our group, but did end up beating Linda Rahm top-ranked Swedish skipper, in a very close race with her doing a penalty just at the finish line.  But it eventually came down to that first race that we had lost, and the team that beat us made it on through the quarterfinals and we were done with racing.  As I write, we’re in a postponement today for the medal races and the finals for the match racing, as there is actually no breeze out on the race course.  We’ve definitely seen it all here in Weymouth!
I finished fourth for the year in the Sailing World Cup rankings, 3 points out of third, which (of course it would work out this way!) was the team that beat us in that initial race.  Next up for me is the Melges 24 Worlds and pre-events in Annapolis with Team Simplicity, then the US Women’s Match Racing Championship in St. Thomas in November.  Looking forward to some more tough competition for both events!

Off to Weymouth after USSTAG Training in Sheboygan

We’ve just finished up three great days of training in Sheboygan and are headed to Weymouth tomorrow for the last Sailing World Cup event!  This event will be a huge one, as we’ll sail in the venue for the 2012 Olympic Games for sailing—Weymouth, which is 2 hours south of London.  It’s also a big event for me personally, as I’ll be trying to defend my current 2nd place on the World Cup ranking list.  Sailing with me are two Olympians who sailed the 2008 Games together in Beijing in the Yngling: Sally Barkow in the middle and Debbie Capozzi on the bow. Together they were both Yngling AND Match Racing World Champions in 2005, and both are skippers in their own right, so I’m enjoying having three skippers on a boat!

We’ve just had an excellent three days of training at the US Sailing Center in Sheboygan, in the new Elliott 6m fleet here, with US Sailing Team Alphagraphics teammates Anna Tunnicliffe, Molly Vandemoer and Alice Manard, who are also going to Weymouth for match racing, as well as Joanne Fisher and Kristen Lane’s teams, who are trying out the Elliotts for the first time and prepping for this weekend’s Grade 2 Buddy Melges Regatta.  Sheboygan has been an excellent host for us for this and our last US Sailing Team Alphagraphics practice here, and along with coach Dave Perry and sailmaker Greg Fisher we’ve learned a lot more about the boats, boatspeed, and boathandling.  Hopefully we’ll get to apply our new knowledge to the conditions in Weymouth, and will be well setup with two practice days there before racing starts on Monday.  Follow along here: http://www.skandiasailforgoldregatta.co.uk

If you’d like to support us, please feel free to e-mail me with words of encouragement, leave a post on the website, or consider donating to the campaign.  I’d like to thank my current supporters, especially the St. Francis Yacht Club Foundation and the Richmond Yacht Club Foundation, as well as individual donors and my family for all of their encouragement.  Also like to thank my individual suppliers Kaenon Polarized, and GU, as well as the US Sailing Team Alphagraphics and it’s sponsors.

Sheboygan-Northern Lights Cup and Elliott 6m Training

Just completed 10 days in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, the site of the new US Sailing Center for Women’s Match Racing and the home to the new fleet of Elliott 6m-the boats that will be used for the 2012 Olympic Games!  The first 5 days in Sheboygan I actually spent racing the Northern Lights Cup with Kristen Lane, calling tactics and trimming main alongside other crew members Ashley Perrin and Jacqueline Schmitz.  After two days of clinic led by Liz Baylis and Carol Cronin, we spent three days racing (well two days racing and one day drifting in fog and no wind but HUGE waves!).  We were able to get two full round robins in though, and had good enough scores to put us into a great last race against the defending champions, the Brazilian team of Juliana Senfft for the win. They were able to get by us and pull off a penalty turn to defend their title, and we finished 2nd, the top Americans, which earned Kristen an invite to the Buddy Melges Regatta in the Elliott 6ms in September!   (Check here for Kristen’s and Ashley’s writeups of the event).

I then spent the next three days in Sheboygan for a US Sailing Team Alphagraphics practice getting to know the Elliot 6m fleet, sailing with Chafee Emory, who’s raced with me in a couple events this year, and Ashley Perrin, a great sailor and offshore racer also from the SF bay area, who stuck around to sail with me post-Northern Lights Cup even after my elbow to her face on the practice day gave her a bloody nose and lip!
I had actually sailed the Elliotts before, along with Chafee and fellow USSTAG skipper Debbie Capozzi, in the World Cup event in Kiel, Germany in July, but for the rest of our group and for coaches Dave Perry and sailmaker Vince Brun they were a new (and very exciting) site for tired slow keelboat eyes!

Unfortunately we didn’t have enough breeze to make the boats really get up and go, but they are very responsive, much more dinghy-like and high aspect than the majority of the match racing fleets.  We spent three great days training, videoing, debriefing, and really getting to know the boats.  We also got a chance to meet Terry Kohler, the man who has helped orchestrate this whole sailing center, the designer Greg Elliott, who was there to make sure the boats were setup properly, and a whole host of Sheboygians who made sure we all felt right at home.  As I told someone at one of our evening functions—I love Sheboygan’s hospitality, I’m from Texas, and I really know hospitality, and it’s equally matched here in the Midwest!  If only there’s a little more breeze next time…

We’ll be back here in a month to train again before heading off to Weymouth, England, for the final World Cup event of 2009.