Stena Match Cup Sweden - Team Gilmour finishes eighth

by Team Gilmour on 8 Jul 2014 It has been a long week at our first Stena Match Cup Sweden, with Team Gilmour finishing a little disappointed in eighth place. We found it a little difficult to build momentum throughout the event and get used to the DS37 yachts. Despite the result we feel that we are still improving and learning from every race and really growing as a team.

There were 14 teams competing in the event which made the qualifying round every important, we had a very slow day one, only competing in one race. Day two was much better for us winning four races and losing only two, we managed to take wins which would turn out to be very important latter to make the quarter finals.

Day three was again a slow day with the ProAm race taking up most of the morning and with us sailing only in the afternoon, we managed a score of one win and one loss taking us to five wins and four losses, from this point every race was important on day four.

Day four the sun disappeared and the rain and wind arrived, we were excited to sailing in the gusty 20 knot conditions but probably more excited to don our new Gul Performance Apparel which proved to be fantastic! We had some really close races in the breeze with reefed mainsails and gusts up to 25 knots, we had a particularly close race against eventual regatta winner Bjorn Hansen and his Hansen Sailing Team.

The pressure was on and we had one last race of the round robin, this was a must win race which would get us into the quarter finals on a four way tie. We were against Taylor Canfield and his US One sailing team, the boys stepped it up and managed to take the win to cement our spot in the quarter finals.

Fransesco Bruni from Luna Rossa Challenge was second top qualifier after the round robin and chose to sail against us. Bruni had been sailing well throughout the round robin and it was going to be a tough best of five series.

We had some nice starts against Bruni but he played the shifts well was able to win in three straight races. We felt like we had improved throughout the regatta but he just did a better job on the day and credit to his team.

Stena Match Cup Sweden has been an amazing event and a big thanks must go out the event organisers and the 120 volunteers who made it such a fun and enjoyable week on Marstrand!

Also a big congratulation to Bjorn Hansen and his Hansen Sailing Team for taking out their third Stena Match Cup Sweden in a row!

Stena Match Cup Sweden is an incredible event with the largest number of engaged spectators we have ever seen. We are looking forward to coming back next year!

Finals results:

1st Bjorn Hansen
2nd Ian Williams
3rd Taylor Canfield
4th Fancesco Bruni
5th Mathieu Richard
6th Keith Swinton
7th Joachim Ashenbrenner
8th David Gilmour
9th Phil Robertson
10th Nicolai Sehested
11th Ed Baird
12th Magnus Holmberg
13th Johnie Berntsson
14th Victor Event website