(From Anna Tunnicliffe's Blog yesterday)
Our next race was interesting. We had a fun pre-start against Team Price (AUS) which resulted in us starting on port at the boat slightly late. We were where we wanted to be but not on time like we would have preferred. However, we came back together and were able to force her to tack. At the bottom of the first beat, there were about 5-6 big shifts that hit within one minute. The two boats went from pinning each other to being pinned. Ultimately, our shift came out on top and we were able to cover her up to the top mark. She rounded right on our tail and surfed into leeward of us as we planed downwind in the building breeze. We stretched the distance enough between the boats to get in our gybe to starboard; she delayed her gybe and ended up hitting us with her spinnaker earning a penalty. At this point she was pinned to windward of us and we held her to the point of a tight spinnaker reach into the mark to ensure that we would round ahead. We rounded with almost a length between us and rolled into a tack. She tacked back shortly thereafter and then her jib halyard broke. They were very clever and quick and managed to get the jib back up only losing about 4-5 lengths in the whole thing. From there they hit some nice shifts and we had to spend some of our lead to lock her in behind us. They had caught up a fair amount and rounded the top mark only a length behind. Not quite sure what happened then on their boat, but they had a delay on their hoist on which we capitalised and we extended away and took the win. It was a great race and they did a fantastic job at keeping the pressure on us the whole time
Our next race was interesting. We had a fun pre-start against Team Price (AUS) which resulted in us starting on port at the boat slightly late. We were where we wanted to be but not on time like we would have preferred. However, we came back together and were able to force her to tack. At the bottom of the first beat, there were about 5-6 big shifts that hit within one minute. The two boats went from pinning each other to being pinned. Ultimately, our shift came out on top and we were able to cover her up to the top mark. She rounded right on our tail and surfed into leeward of us as we planed downwind in the building breeze. We stretched the distance enough between the boats to get in our gybe to starboard; she delayed her gybe and ended up hitting us with her spinnaker earning a penalty. At this point she was pinned to windward of us and we held her to the point of a tight spinnaker reach into the mark to ensure that we would round ahead. We rounded with almost a length between us and rolled into a tack. She tacked back shortly thereafter and then her jib halyard broke. They were very clever and quick and managed to get the jib back up only losing about 4-5 lengths in the whole thing. From there they hit some nice shifts and we had to spend some of our lead to lock her in behind us. They had caught up a fair amount and rounded the top mark only a length behind. Not quite sure what happened then on their boat, but they had a delay on their hoist on which we capitalised and we extended away and took the win. It was a great race and they did a fantastic job at keeping the pressure on us the whole time
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