Hi all,
We had a good but tough time racing in the Miami OCR this week. Sailing with my team of Karina Shelton on main and spinnaker trim and Alice Manard on bow, we knew we’d be facing a tough fleet of competitors, especially given our limited time together as a new team! With a forecast for 8-15 every day, it looked set to be a good week of racing; and, after a 3-day (very light air) clinic last week and two practice days on Saturday and Sunday, we were rearing to race. With 24 competitors and only 8 boats, the groupings and rotations get complicated, so there’s not a lot of leeway for mistakes as you have to advance early on to get through to the later stages.
It all started with thunderstorms on Monday, which meant that our group C didn’t get any of our scheduled four races off. That left us sailing 7 races right off the bat Tuesday morning, with the top two advancing into the Gold round robin of 6, and the second two making it into the Repechage round robin to decide the final two spots in the 8-team quarterfinals. Unfortunately for our team, with a loss to current World Champion Aussie Nicky Souter, we had to win our final race of the seven to make it into the gold round. Sailing against a team I had beaten twice before (Sam Osborne, NZL), we led off the line and out to the right side, only to make a silly tactical error that cost us the race. On the upwind, assuming she would hunt us if we tried to duck, we leebowed her from the left on port tack when we really should have ducked her and gotten to her right for starboard advantage. One mistake is all it takes in this close racing and we couldn’t regain the lead thereafter. So, with that loss we were relegated to the repechage round.
In the repechage round we had 6 excellent teams, including the winner of the Sail for Gold event in Weymouth and three other top ten ISAF ranked teams, all fighting for the final two spots in the quarterfinals. We started our Wednesday well, defeating the currently 8th-ranked team in our first race and then the winners of the Weymouth event in our second race, then went on to have a very tight third race against Lotte Meldgaard of Denmark. Going down the run, with the advantage of being to leeward and on the starboard side of her, I flashed back to a race against her last year in April where we were in the exact same scenario. All we had to do here was force her past the finish line or draw a penalty, either by regaining luffing rights by double gybing, or by fake gybing and forcing her to gybe onto port while we were still on starboard. Unfortunately for us we tried to fake gybe, she bit and gybed onto port, but the umpires declared that we had double gybed and not given her time to gybe back. They gave us a penalty, effectively giving the win to her. It was a tough loss for us, and turned out that in the final three-way tie at the end of the repechage for second, Lotte would win the tie-break against us and advance through to the quarters.
On Thursday we started with a close loss to Lucinda Whitty, and then were up against 5th-ranked Silke Hahlbrock from Germany, whom we had beaten in our group C round robin but who we know to be a very tough competitor. In the pre-start, I thought we had perfectly executed pushing both of us over the line, as the leeward boat we would then duck and clear while she was still over. Unfortunately as the line was so pin favored, the RC only called us over, and in the following attempt to clear the umpires penalized us for hitting the pin end. We thought what an awful end to our racing—to be over, not clearing, AND hitting the pin—giving Silke at least a 5-boatlength lead off the line! We were pretty much analyzing how to do better next time that scenario came up while on the upwind leg, before we regrouped and decided we could still make this race up. We got on her breeze downwind, rounded the leeward mark only 2 boatlengths behind, initiated a tacking duel on the upwind and successfully stopped a slam dunk by her, forcing her to the left while we got the right and starboard advantage. At the top mark we forced her to tack to port then rounded ahead of her, but still had a penalty to get rid of before we were free to race to the finish. Cue the terribly slow downwind to follow, where we both had sails sucked to centerline and skippers shoving our rudders back and forth as hard as we could—anything we could do to slow and get her to overlap, while she did anything she could to keep from overlapping us. We finally hooked her, forced her off to the right side of the course, discussed taking her miles past the finish line to then tack back on the way upwind to the finish (hence doing our penalty by tacking on the downwind leg), but she broke the overlap and forced us to our proper course. We lined up again, directly downwind in line with her, sails centerline again, and my biggest fear was crossing the finish line that way—inching forward ever so slowly still with a penalty and her directly behind us.
Thankfully we were able again to slow a bit harder than her, force her to overlap us, luff her this time all the way to head to wind, with our bow clear we tacked through and bore away, clearing our penalty and hoisting our kite at the same time to race the 3 boatlengths to the finish line. Amazingly we were clear ahead of her with a kite up and going to finish ahead of her, when she came close behind us and hit our rudder as we crossed the line, thus getting a penalty on her as well. It was a great relief to cross the line, knowing that we’d been able to come back from a deficit so huge, finishing the regatta for us on a positive note and entertaining the spectators while we were at it. The tie between her, us and Lotte Meldgaard for the quarterfinal spot went to Lotte, so we ultimately finished the regatta 9th out of 24. It was a respectable finish, but one that we know we can better.
We were happy to have learned a lot, had some very close racing, and grown immensely as a team in all aspects of our game throughout the week. Our speed, boathandling, and communication are massively improving every time we step in the boat together and we can only continue on this vastly upward trend from here! We’d like to thank US Sailing and the Rolex Miami OCR for hosting such a great event, the weather for mostly cooperating and letting the match racers get 7 races in on a day when many of the other fleets didn’t even go out, our coach Dave Perry for his wonderful insight, and the many volunteers that make events like this happen. I’d also especially like to thank Alice and Karina for their efforts—they’re both incredible sailors and I can’t wait to spend more time with them. It's important for me as well to thank the US Sailing Team Alphagraphics, they've done a phenomenal job here supporting their team members with the number of coaches, staff, and physical training support on water and on land. And I'd like to thank St. Francis Yacht Club for helping me, and tell them how proud I am that so many members of the club are here competing and working in this event!
Until next time,
Genny
