July 5th, 2011
Marstrand, Sweden

It was a long day of sailing today, but a successful one for Team Maclaren, as we advanced to the finals of the Stena Women's Match Cup. After finishing the round robin in second with a 7-2 record, we went on to win our semi-finals 3-0 against GBR's Lucy Magregor.

The day started with a 7:45am briefing and a 9am start time. The wind was blowing across the sailing area which meant that the courses were short so we did three laps on the course all morning (normally we would do two). We had four races to sail to complete the round robin and all of them were close. At times, the racing turned into fleet racing as there were 6 to 8 boats (3 to 4 different races going on at once) rounding the marks at the same time. It was a lot of fun and changed our tactics a little from match racing our opponent to racing the 'fleet' to ensure we rounded ahead.

At the end of the round, we were tied for the lead with Ekaterina Skudina from Russia, but because we lost our race to her this morning, she won the round. But we were ok with that because she then had to choose her opponent and she chose France's Claire Leroy, which left us racing Lucy.

The semi's were a first-to-3-points series. The wind had shifted to the right and the race committee were able to lengthen out the course so we had normal length legs and only two laps. We won the first race against Lucy after winning the start and managing to hold her off the whole race. The second race was a bit harder though. We didn't have a great start, it was just ok. The pin end was favoured, and we were at the boat end. At the top mark she was a length ahead of us. Downwind, we did a good job of forcing a gybing duel and were able to draw her in close enough then get to her left so as to hold her passed the leeward mark. After the mark, we rounded and extended our lead to a length or two by the top and concentrated on sailing the shifts the best we could to keep our air free and the boat fast. Between the second and third race, the wind started to lighten a little and shift to the right a bit. This time it was very important to win the boat end which we were able to do and from there, led around the course to take the third race and the series.

Tomorrow, in the finals, we will be racing Claire Leroy FRA after she took her series 3-2 over Ekaterina. Our racing will begin tomorrow afternoon (local time); the men start their round robin racing in the morning. You can check for updates and the results on the regatta website: http://www.matchcupsweden.com/en/

We would very much like to thank our Title Sponsor, Maclaren, our Gold Level Sponsors 11th Hour Racing and Laser Performance, and our Bronze Level Sponsors Carmeuse, Trinity Yachts, and Chicago Match Race Center for their continued support of our campaign for the 2012 Olympic Games. We would also like to thank US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics (USSTAG) and its sponsors for their continued support. Also, thank you to our private donors. Please remember that any and all donations/contributions to our campaign should be made payable directly to either The Sailing Foundation of New York (tax deductible) memo'd Anna Tunnicliffe, or to Anna Tunnicliffe.

Sail Hard,

And as usual, don't forget, email us your questions and comments.  We love getting them and sharing our love of sailing and women's match racing.

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