Kieler Woche 2011 day two for Team Maclaren

by Anna Tunnicliffe on 20 Jun 2011 Kieler Woche 2011's second day has turned out well for Team Maclaren. Anna Tunnicliffe shares a recap of the action in Kiel, Germany.

Day two was another long day of sailing as the race committee performed wonderfully under difficult conditions and managed to get in nine flights of sailing. We had a good day, winning all of our races, giving us a 9-1 record in the first round robin and a 2-0 so far in the second.

We hit the water just after nine this morning and headed out for a 10am start. We got out there with a nice nine to twelve knots of wind that rather quickly increased and brought with it the rain. When we were sailing, it was not too bad, but when we had to rotate out of a boat and have a bye for a flight, it got pretty chilly. It rained until about 4pm, then eventually around 5pm, the clouds began to break up and the sun came out, significantly warming up the day. In between the rain leaving and the sun coming out however, the wind did an almost 180 degree shift, the beginning of which we were racing in.

The wind started dying in our second race of the second round robin, and started to get very patchy. We were racing Goncalves (POR) and led them off the line as they were OCS. We had a good 6 length lead on the upwind which we held until we rounded the weather mark and then slowed significantly. She caught a puff as she rounded and closed the gap rather quickly. We had a little gybing dual downwind which resulted in us splitting, us to the right side of the course, and her to the left.

As we came back together we were bow to bow, but unfortunately she managed to get the inside at the mark. Because we were going so slow, she did a lot of side slipping as she rounded and we were on the outside and ended up tapping her rail because we didn’t give her enough room. So now we were behind with a penalty and not a lot of wind.

However, we found some wind giving us great speed upwind, and we managed to get back in front of her by working the left side of the course early and then the right side at the top. We extended enough to just about burn our penalty and given what had happened on the last downwind leg, we decided that we should probably burn it upwind. We did it right on the port layline, but were a bit slow coming out of it.

We were still able to keep our bow forward of her, but only just. We got back up to speed and led her to the next puff which was a righty, causing us to both be under layline. We got the puff, tacked, and rounded the mark a couple lengths ahead.

Downwind was when the major right shift started to show up. We'd get a puff while the other boat sat and vice versa. It was a bit stressful as we would extend out on her, but then slow down and she would extend on us. It came down to who could drift across the line first. Because of the wind shift, the RC boat had swung the other way on the course so we had to sail right around the 40 foot boat to make it to the finish line. Luckily we were able to drift a little faster and crossed the line just inches ahead of her.

Tomorrow’s schedule is to finish the round robin and then start the quarterfinals on Tuesday.

Kieler Woche website
Team Maclaren website