US Women’s Match Racing Champions!!!
Photos by Dean Barnes
Our team of Alana O’Reilly, Chafee Emory, Liz Hall and I had a great week of racing in St. Thomas USVI last week and came away champions of the US Women’s Match Racing Championships. After winning the round robins last year but losing the in finals to Anna Tunnicliffe (who came straight to the event this year from being named ISAF’s Rolex Woman Sailor of the Year), we were okay with being in the opposite situation this time around, fine with coming into the finals as the underdog. That’s one of the good parts about match racing, with each new round comes a blank slate, so our biggest concern going into Sunday was that we wouldn’t get to race with the bad/light forecast. After briefly postponing ashore we got out onto the race course and finished the semi-finals, in which we beat Katy Lovell 2-0 and Anna beat her opponent Annie Nelson.
We discussed with the umps the finals match-up, with Anna picking the starboard entry, which left us to pick the boat. We picked Stinger, the yellow boat that we started off the regatta in,
Stinger!
and continued with our singing of “The Road Goes on Forever” that had gotten us pumped to race that morning. The first race we got a penalty in the pre-start for gybing too close in one of our circles, but were able to lead off the line, and built enough of a lead on the second upwind to spin our penalty on the starboard layline. Anna caught up to us and rounded the weather mark close on our stern. She was able to get onto our breeze in the very light air, which led to a couple very close luffing matches and gybes, and we got her at the finish line by half a boatlength. A squall came through as we swapped boats for the 2nd race, and in the building breeze we lost the second race with her team leading the whole way around. The third race we had a good start at the favored pin with Anna over the line next to us, thus we lead around the track, leaving us ahead in the series 2-1, with only one more win needed to clinch the victory.
The last race was the most exciting in many ways. We had starboard entry in the pre-start, and held her in the dial-up for a very long time, but finally tacked away as she gybed around at about one minute to the start. We were below the line in a leeward luffing position, but weren’t going to be able to make the race committee boat. She tacked away, and we had to slow tack at the boat, so won the right but were behind at the gun. Happily, the breeze line filled on the right and we were able to catchup from a leebowing position to cross her and round the windward mark ahead in a big right shift. We rounded the leeward mark ahead and matched her tack for tack up the beat, but in the last tack she went out past the starboard layline, and with a 20 degree right we thought we were laying. Unfortunately there was still more wind out there, so she caught up to us and we were only barely able to cross her on port at the windward mark. She tacked below and luffed us a couple of times, and we were given a penalty for windward/leeward not keeping clear.
Photo by Dean Barnes
We had a very intense downwind from there, where we set and gybed onto starboard at her, luffing her back almost into the windward mark, trying to draw an offsetting foul or be able to tack through and clear our penalty. We just couldn’t tack, and she setup well just one boatlength on our stern for the long slow stalling match to the finish line, with her goal to keep just enough distance behind us so we couldn’t spin. We slowed hard, gybed a couple of times and finally were able to hook her and luff her on starboard gybe. She rolled us, and broke the overlap, we double gybed the main and got back to her, then near the finish line but above the pin she rolled us and broke the overlap again. All we had to do was not overlap her but stay close enough so she couldn’t gybe and cross our bow, then sail past the pin and tack on the way back up to the finish, clearing our penalty as we bore away. Kites came down on both boats in anticipation of this, but then they gybed onto port in front of us, we as the starboard boat had rights and pulled our flag, got the offsetting penalty, pushed them back to starboard then gybed away and sailed closehauled to the pin to win the race and the regatta! A very thrilling victory, and I can’t think of more refreshing water to celebrate in than the deep-green/blues of Cowpet Bay at the finish line!
Our team had a great time both on and off the water, and can’t thank enough the hospitality of St. Thomas, St. Thomas Yacht Club, and our hosts Denise and Peter Holmberg for showing us how wonderful the islands can be. We topped off our win by going to a Third World reggae concert on Sunday night at the Yacht Haven Grande, celebrated our victory and got to check out where we’ll be racing next month for when we go back for the Carlos Aguilar Memorial Regatta to defend our title from last year. Stay tuned!
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 12:14 pm and is filed under Recent News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
