Knickerbocker Cup - Team Gilmour 'Close but not close enough'

by Team Gilmour on 2 Sep 2013 In the 2013 Knickerbocker Cup, Team Gilmour has finished in third place. After an up and down round robin we qualified fifth. Going into the quarter finals the first qualifier had their choice of opponent. We were not chosen by any of the teams above us which left us to race against current world number one, Taylor Canfield and his US One Team who had qualified sixth.

'We had a tough task on our hands,' said skipper David Gilmour. 'We have raced Canfield a number of times before with a mixture of wins and losses, but we were feeling confident in the large SM40 yachts and knew that Canfield didn't have a good record in the boats'. We managed to take the first two wins in the first to three wins series late on Friday afternoon. We had a good feed at the local Thai restaurant and an early night, ready for the remaining races of the quarter finals the following morning.

It was light wind on the Saturday morning and Canfield managed to play the shifts well to take his first win. We regrouped and focused for the next race and came out on fire with better speed and a good plan and managed to take the win to move on to the semi-finals.

Nicolai Sehested from Denmark had the choice in the semi-finals and chose Chris Poole from USA, which left us to race the Eric Monnin from Switzerland.

We lost the first two races against Monnin, again in light and shifty conditions. We were on the back foot but mounted our comeback to win the next two races. It came down to the fifth and final race, we had a great start and forced Monnin to tack off and decided to tack with him, the breeze shifted and we were slightly outside the shift and Monnin was able to get in front by the top mark and defend the race from then on.

This left us to race off for third place against Chris Poole and his Riptide Racing Team. Having a good record against Poole, we felt confident. We won the first race but lost the second after a controversial umpire decision that allowed Poole to escape from a precarious position in the prestart. That left the scores 1-1 overnight with the first team to reach three points to take third place. We then had a chance to unwind at the 'Spinnaker Splash Party' with some great food and another early night before the rest of the petit final. We disposed of Poole in two more races to win 3-1 and take third overall.

Currently overall we are leading the US grand slam series but are being closely chased by the teams of Nicolai Sehested and Chris Steele. All will be decided next week at the Oakcliff event with a winner takes all scenario set up.

Congratulations to Nicolai Sehested and his team from Denmark on the win and Eric Monnin for second place.

Also a big thanks to Bob and Betts Carpenter our hosts for the week, absolute troopers at 91 and 87 years old!!