Black Match reports on Monsoon Cup Day 3

by Adam Minoprio on 1 Dec 2007 Hello from BlackMatch in Malaysia,

Day 3 of the Monsoon Cup had us finishing off the first round robin and qualifying for the quarter finals in 2nd place. We had an excellent morning winning 3 straight matches against Jesper Radich, Kate Spithill and Stefan Lindberg. After a break for lunch and the local muslim prayer session, we had one more race against world #2 Ian Williams, we lost in a very close battle, but with a record of 7 wins and 4 losses we go into the quarter finals with many positives. The quarter finals are formatted so that the top qualifier in the round robin chooses who he wants to race, in this case Peter Gilmour, the second qualifier also gets to choose who they race and so on.

In our first race against Jesper Radich, we managed to get a slight advantage off the start line and the power off to the right hand side of the course. We sailed a very clean race and although we could never shake Jesper and his crew, we held on for a very close victory.

Next up we had the younger sister of America's Cup Skipper Kate Spithill. We dominated her in the pre start and again won the right hand side of the course off the start line. This meant that when we came back together we were on starboard tack and had the right of way. Kate tacked to leeward of us but we maintained our speed and managed to roll over the top of her. On the first run we had a healthy lead and as we approached the bottom mark Tim went forward to 'human pole' the kite as the spinnaker pole came off. As Tim went further forward to drop the kite the boat rolled to windward and Tim went overboard. To his credit he managed to hold on to the kite sheet and Dave dragged him back aboard at the back of the boat. We still managed a good mark rounding only losing a boat length to the girls and went on to win comfortably.

After a comfortable win against Stefan Lindberg, we came up against Ian Williams. A pretty standard pre-start saw us once again manage to win the favored right hand side of the course off the start line. We gained a healthy lead during the first 2 thirds of the race but going in to the second downwind Ian and his crew made some serious inroads. The Brit managed to get the edge over us up the next beat and took a narrow victory.

With the pairings for tomorrows racing being decided tonight, we are really looking forward to the quarter finals tomorrow. The four teams to miss out on the quarters are former world #1 and current world #4 Sebastian Col, Stefan Linberg, Tiffany Koo and Kate Spithill.

Another thank you to our sponsors Fedex, Line 7, Waiwera Infinity and our Yacht Club, the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. Also a big thank you to all of our supporters and we hope we can do you proud for the remainder of this regatta. For further regatta info please check out http://www.monsooncup.com.my/ and http://www.sail-world.com/.