Day 1, 3-0 And A Lot Of Wind

April 22, 2012
Hyeres, France

It was a good start for Team Maclaren today. We opened the series with three wins before racing was cancelled for the day due to too much wind.

Team Maclaren

Today's Forecast For Hyeres, FRA

We arrived at our boat this morning to find the mast down and the bosuns fixing the boat. Apparently the mast broke at the end of the day yesterday, so it needed replacing. They eventually got it sorted and we headed out to the race course at 9:30. Racing started only just behind schedule and rolled pretty smoothly. Our first race was against Team Skudina (RUS). We had a good start to the right of them off the line. We're able to pin them to the port layline and lead them into the top mark. From there we were able to extend on every leg and put a point on the board.

Our second race was sailed in slightly windier conditions and was against our US teammates, Team Tulloch. After a close first half of the race, we were able to get a cross on layline and lead around the mark. Again from there we were able to extend and win the second race. We made the third race a little tough on ourselves from the getgo when we started OCS* against Team Hahlbrock (GER). We were able to close up the gap and round the top mark right behind her. She tried to slow at the top to trap us, but got a little down-speed and drifted into the mark earning a penalty. We had a better bear-away-and-set and passed her right out of the mark, but she rolled us back half way down. At the bottom we returned the favour and rounded inside at the mark and extended to win the third and, what was ultimately, our last race for the day.

After that the wind started to get stronger and stronger slowly building into the low to mid 20's. At this point the race committee boat was having a hard time staying anchored. After about an hour and a half of waiting for the anchor to grab, they sent us in for an indefinite amount of time while they tried to find a solution. The wind, however, had other ideas and kept building until it was steadily in the upper 20's and gusting into the 40's. Around 5:30pm they called racing for the day and announced that we will have a 9:30am start tomorrow morning to try and catch up on the schedule.

You can follow along with updates and results on the regatta website: Semaine Olympique Francaise De Voile (http://sof.ffvoile.com/)

We would very much like to thank our Title Sponsor, Maclaren, our Gold Level Sponsors 11th Hour Racingand Laser Performance, and our Bronze Level Sponsors Carmeuse, Trinity Yachts, Chicago Match Race Center, and Sperry Top-Sider for their continued support of our campaign for the 2012 Olympic Games. We would also like to thank St Francis Sailing Foundation, and US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics 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 Tunnicliffe.