Winning on the Swings

by Charlie Ogletree on 11 Oct 2007 What’s that old saying about winning on the swings and losing on the roundabouts? That’s the way it is at the U.S. Sailing Olympic Trials for the Tornado Class, where for the fourth day in a row Johnnie Lovell and I aboard Advanced Equities I beat Robbie Daniel and Hunter Stunzi in one race and finished second to them in the other.

For four consecutive days the lead has seesawed between them and us, them and us! With the regatta half over, we are still equal on points, and for that matter, on finishes. The discard rule kicked in today but that didn’t bring any relief. We each dropped a second place.

It’s been obvious from the outset that Robbie and Hunter’s bid for the US Tornado Olympic berth would be the biggest obstacle in our drive to represent our country for a fourth time and to improve on the Silver Medal we won in Athens.

Our pre-start maneuvers quickly turned into match race prestarts and we’ve been pretty darn successful for the last four days in controlling them off the line . What we can’t control are the capricious shifts and puffs that have confounded all our attempts to cover them. One thing’s for sure. This regatta is great practise for whatever crew makes it next year to the notoriously tricky waters of Qingdao.

We started racing today in five or six knots of breeze out of the west. We had another good match race in the pre-start and got the better of them by quite a bit to get off the line with a nice lead, and in a controlling position. They began to get close to us on the last weather leg but we won comfortably.
With our back-to-back first places, last night and today, we began to get excited about the possibility of a third victory to break the tie.

The breeze was up to 12 knots with signs of building so we decided to increase the pressure some more in our pre-start match with Robbie. We managed to bury him pretty good but other boats were in the area and we had to break off for our start. His only option was to tack and go right and wouldn’t you know, the breeze increased and went right. That was it. We made incremental gains throughout the race but the race was his.

Tomorrow is our lay day and we’ll be spending some time checking the boat over for any potential gear problems that might be developing. After that we plan to take it easy. On Thursday we’ll be beginning eight more races – in effect another regatta – to see who goes to Qingdao.

Our host club is the San Diego Yacht Club. We’ll be racing out on Coronado Roads every day through October 14, with the 10th set aside as layday or makeup day. We’ll have a daily update for you here, plus full Tornado Trials Results. The photos featured here are courtesy Carl Hancock. More excellent photos can be viewed on the SDYC Photo Gallery. Be sure to visit our website at www.t-squaredracing.com. Our sponsor, Advanced Equities, is at www.advancedequities.com.

Sail fast,