Archive for June, 2010

Advanced to Gold Round Robin at Kiel Week

After two days of racing at Kiel Week, we have advanced through to the Gold Round Robin as the top seed of our Group B. We went 3-0 today, including wins against #2 World Ranked Claire Leroy and last year’s World Champion Nicky Souter.  It was a light, very shifty and puffy day on the water, with less rain and more sun than we anticipated. With a skewed starting line for most of our races, our game plan was to win the pin and get the first cross, and we were able to execute that plan when needed.
Our closest race was against Claire Leroy, where we got a penalty in the pre-start, were able to get ahead on the upwind, and then got into a luffing match on the downwind near the leeward mark.  We did a fake gybe and they took the bait and gybed into us, with a Port/Starboard foul offsetting our initial penalty.  However, Claire gybed so hard she forced us onto Port with her, then into the zone, so we called for a red penalty as it was clearly a change of control for the race.  The umpires gave her the red, which meant she had to take her penalty turn immediately but we still had our initial penalty.  We got to the right for big right pressure and a shift, and were able to take our penalty on the upwind leg and still win by a good margin.

We won the other two races today and went 3-1 yesterday to go 6-1 for the round, putting us as the top seed in our group and advancing us to the Gold Round Robin, along with Claire Leroy’s team who finished 2nd.  Nicky Souter and Ekatarina Skudina (the team that beat us) advance to the repechage to fight for the last two spots in the quarterfinals.  The Gold Round Robin consists of the top two seeds from each of the three groups, and we now race the other 5 teams in the Gold Round for seeding placement going into the quarterfinals.  The other American team of Anna Tunnicliffe, Molly Vandemoer and Debbie Capozzi also made it through to the Gold with a 3-0 today and 6-1 record, so it was a great day for US Women’s Match Racing.  Alice, Jenn and I have been working on improving as a new team, especially in communication and boathandling, so are really looking forward to some good close racing over the next couple days.

We’d like to thank coach Dave Dellenbaugh for his help this week, Dean Brenner for coming out to support today, USSTAG and St. Francis YC for their assistance, as well as suppliers GU and Kaenon Polarized.  You can continue to follow results here.

Top Ten in the World Rankings! and Prep for Kiel Week

With 3 big events in the last two months, we’ve moved up for the first time to the top ten in the ISAF World Match Race Rankings! (link here). After a very close silver at Santa Maria Cup, and a bronze at NYYC, we are now ranked 9th in the ISAF Women’s MR World Rankings and have received an invite this week to the 2010 Women’s Match Racing World Championships, to be held at NYYC in the fall.  But a month away from the Elliotts, racing instead in Sonars and J22s, meant it was time to get back into the boats to practice for our next World Cup event: Kiel Week, which starts this Friday.

We spent the last 5 days training in the Elliotts at the Chicago Match Race Center, and it was great for Alice and I to get back into the Elliott and to welcome a new teammate, Jen Chamberlain, to the middle of the boat.  Jen was an All-American Crew at St. Mary’s College, where she helped the team to win each of the three spring nationals championships (women’s, team racing and coed) during her collegiate sailing career. Last year she led their team as a captain to win the Coed National Championship in San Francisco, famously taking the tiller to cross the line in a massive lead in the last B-division race, taking the race and regatta. Jenn is an instructor at Annapolis Yacht Club and, after spending a little time last year in the 470, she’s now getting into the match racing field.  Her learning curve is tremendous and we are very happy to have Jenn on the team for Kiel Week! We’ve had a great week of practice here in Chicago with USSTAG teammates Anna Tunnicliffe, Debbie Capozzi, and Molly Vandemoer, as well as coach Dave Perry.  With varying wind and water conditions throughout the week, we got a lot of quality practice in. We worked on match racing situations against Anna’s team and boathandling in everything from 22 kts and flat water to 2-4 kts and big chop.  We feel much more confident in our teamwork now and look forward to flying out to Germany tomorrow! You can follow the racing at Kiel week on the regatta website at: http://www.kieler-woche.de/eng/englishdefault.php

We’d like to thank coach Dave Perry and USSTAG; Chicago Match Race Center for providing their great training facility, tons of volunteers, and for letting us play on the Tom 28s with their members; and especially would like to thank Lindsey Duda for housing our team in Chicago.

Stay tuned!
Genny

Second Place at the Santa Maria Cup

The Boat U.S. Santa Maria Cup finished up yesterday, with a typical shifty and puffy Annapolis day giving us a very intense and long day of racing, and we finished up second overall, losing to #2 world ranked Claire Leroy 3-2 in the finals. Sailing with me was a brand new team, with Molly Carapiet on main, Katie Pettibone on Jib/spinnaker trim, and Jenn Chamberlin on the bow.   We worked on our communication throughout the double round robin, and were seeded fourth against top seed Sally Barkow for the semis.   We went 1-1 Friday night, tying it up. Saturday morning we lost initially then won the last two races against Sally to finish 3-2 in the semis, leading us to meet # 2 world-ranked Claire Leroy in the finals.  The finals also went to five races, so at the end of the day we were joking that we’d gotten our money’s worth with the maximum number of races we ever could have done.

The racing was difficult with big shifts and pressure differences throughout the day and across the course, and a lot of the wins were determined by who had the better start headed to the first shift.  But with the big shifts and pressure changes the pre-starts were very interesting and calling laylines and time to the start were big stresses and very important to winning the start headed the right way. Claire won the first race, we won the second, then the third was a very close fight, with a luffing match at the top mark and both downwind legs.  We had a close gybe incident on the final downwind with contact that we believe would have been a penalty on Claire, but the umpires didn’t see it so the incident was green flagged and Claire beat us across the line.  We then won the fourth race, tying it up for a winner take all in the last race.

The last pre-start was as aggressive as all of the previous had been, and as we luffed near the end we picked the left side and won the pin.  Unfortunately Claire won the boat and the right, and was able to get a right shift and crossed us up the course.  At the leeward mark the RC signaled a course change and the change mark was being dropped by the weather mark boat far left of the original mark.  Unfortunately since the breeze had gone even further right, so the rest of the race was mostly a one tack one gybe to the finish, and Claire Leroy’s team took the win and the title. For a first-time team we were very happy to have gotten better and better throughout the week and to be able to finish second in this great group.  (But I do have to say after losing to Claire in the finals of this event two years in a row I really want to take it next year!!)

I’d especially like to thank my teammates this week for doing an excellent job, our housing hosts Dick and Phyllis for taking care of us, our regatta hosts Nancy and Phil for keeping us entertained (and well-fed!), and the club and all of the volunteers for putting on an excellent event.  I also would like to thank USSTAG for their support.

Next up is the Kiel Week World Cup event in Germany, and I leave on Tuesday for training in the Elliotts in Chicago then straight to Germany.