Delta Lloyd Regatta - Team Maclaren in the fight for bronze

by Anna Tunnicliffe on 29 May 2011 Delta Lloyd Regatta’s rough day of mixed wind and racing has Anna Tunnicliffe of Team Maclaren reflecting on the race and the fight that will take place in the final for the bronze medal.

Women’s Match Racing will see Team Maclaren fight for bronze in the final round against the Chinese Team Wang in tomorrow’s race.

It was a windy day that turned rainy later on, on day four of the Delta Lloyd Regatta. We managed to fit in both the quarter finals and the semi finals, finally getting off the water by 8:15pm

We had a successful quarterfinals round against Team Skudina from Russia beating them 3-1, before we came in for a three hour break. In the semi's we lost a close 3-2 to Team Groeneveld from the Netherlands.

This morning's conditions were quite exciting as it got windier and windier throughout the round. The first two races were sailed with spinnakers, before the race committee put up the flag that said we were not allowed to use them anymore. This made for more interesting racing as at the top of the leg, the wind was in the high teens where kites would have been no problem, but towards the bottom of the course, the winds picked up into the high 20's/low 30's making even two sail reaching a bit scary at times.

We had an exciting last race in the quarterfinals against Ekat. In the pre-start we got a penalty, but managed to win the start and led at the top mark. Downwind, we saw an opportunity to spin our penalty as she gybed to port at us on starboard. We dialed her up and went into our penalty turn, but she couldn't turn all the way through the wind because of the puff she was in, and as we came out of our tack, her bow was blown down into us. We flagged the situation, but earned another penalty. At that time, we now had two flags up which meant that we needed to spin the second one immediately.

We spun it and then argued with the umpires that we had already spun our first one. They agreed and took down both flags. Unfortunately, by now we were eight lengths behind going into the bottom mark. Ekat. didn't have a great rounding and we made a few boat lengths gain. Upwind, Molly and Deb did a fantastic job of finding the shifts and we had closed right up to her by the top of the leg. On the port layline, she tried to slam tack on us, but we luffed and she earned a penalty. We rounded the mark ahead and in one of the biggest puffs of the day, went on to win the race.

After this race we were sent in to wait for the wind to die. It eventually did, but brought the rain with it. But the plus side was that we were back out racing and we could use spinnakers again.

In the semi's we had a great start to the series; we went to win our first two races. From there on though, we struggled a bit with getting the first cross off the line which meant that we were fighting from behind the whole time. We managed to keep all the races close, but just couldn't quite get around them at the finish.

Tomorrow we will be racing Team Wang from China for the bronze medal. You can follow the racing live on the regatta website. Since it's just after 10pm and I haven't had dinner yet, I'm going to wrap up this blog now and go eat and sleep.

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 Team Maclaren Event website