2nd At The USSTAG WMR Qualifiers

May 14, 2011

8:43pmCT

Sheboygan, WI

It was a great day of sailing that ended in disappointment for us. We had three great races in 26-36kts and 5-6 ft seas, but lost by a length in the third race of our first-to-two point series to Sally, EK, and Alana.

Photo: (c) Mark Wessel 2011

The day started with a very fine rain and about 20kts of breeze, both of which slowly got worse throughout the day. The temperatures were hovering around 45 degrees, with the wind chill settling in around 35 degrees. After a bit of a delay due to breakdowns, we finally got racing.

In race one, we had great speed and boat handling off the line and took an early lead in the race. Half way up the first beat the shiv, for the jib halyard ripped out of the mast, but it stayed up luckily and we held our lead around the course and finished the race with a bit of a lead. Since we broke the halyard, we had to switch boats, so we hopped onto our coach boat and zoomed ashore to pick up a new boat. We ended up taking the boat that Genny had sailed, and they were very helpful in getting us going again as soon as we could. They bailed the boat out while we rigged everything and then we headed out for another race.

In race two, we had a great start again, but missed a shift up the first beat which gave Sally the chance to catch back up to us. At the top mark, we came together, us on starboard and Sally on port. We managed to make her tack and we tacked away to a couple length lead. Downwind, neither boat set their kites, but they caught up to us on a wave. As we gybed for layline, we had a better gybe and caught a wave and surfed back ahead of them and rounded with two lengths lead at the bottom mark. Sally caught a wave as she entered the mark and surfed it up to leeward of us forcing us to tack away shortly after the mark. We had a bit of a set back then as our kite started to come out of the bag which put us back four or five lengths at the next cross. We sailed hard though and caught back up to them half way up the beat. We went for a duck and had a bit of a bad duck causing us to stall out, but still rounded the mark only two lengths behind. Downwind, we had to set a kite to catch up to them. We set and went for a gybe. We came out of the gybe ok, but then quickly ran into the wave in front of us and kept going down. We ended up "capsizing" the boat, and all three of us went in the water. Needless to say, we didn't win that race.

So it came down to the final race. Again we had a great lead off the line and were quite comfortable around the course. On the last downwind leg, we had a four lengths lead when she rounded and set her kite. We set ours to match, but then she quickly blew her kite out and had to take it down. We decided to match the douse, but had a bit of a slower douse and ran over our spinnaker sheet. While doing that, she caught up to within two lengths of us. Both boats gybed and we struggled to get on a plane with the sheet under us. She surfed to leeward of us and just crossed the line ahead of us by three quarters of a length to take the series 2-1.

We were very dissappointed with this loss. We sailed very well but had two major mistakes that cost us the win. We learned from these mistakes and given that we haven't sailed the boat in that much breeze for an extremely long time, we are happy with where our training is taking us and where we are going. It's hard to take this loss, but it's what makes us stronger and keeps us learning and wanting more. Sally's team sailed very well, and a huge congrats to them for this win. And we would like to thank Dave Dellenbaugh, our fourth teammate, for coaching us this week.

We now have a week off before we head to Holland on Saturday for our next ISAF Sailing World Cup Event, the Delta Lloyd Regatta.

We would like to thank our gold level sponsor 11th Hour Racing, 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,

Anna

Team Tunnicliffe

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.

Anna: 4D's: "Dream,Desire,Dedication,Discipline"^TM

Team Tunnicliffe: 3P's: Passion...Performance...Perfection...^TM