Liz Baylis

Hi,

We sailed our final match yesterday – a sail-off for 9^th place with Silke Hahlbrock - GER (#3 in the ISAF World Ranking who will be competing in the World championship next week). It was an exciting match where we fought back from behind and passed Silke on the final run and then caused her to get a penalty right before the finish. So we secured 9^th place overall. Although the 9^th place is not what we came here for, it was a very hard fought 9^th in a very tough field. As a team we learned a lot and are looking forward to our next opportunity to sail these boats. With this regatta under our belt, we feel we will be much more competitive the next time we sail in them and feel confident that some of those close matches will go our way next time!

The event web site http://www.lysekilwomensmatch.se/ has lots of photos and will be posting the final results as they happen:

- The photos are divided by days in the “Bildgalleri” (click on the days in the left menu):

http://www.lysekilwomensmatch.se/page/3/bildgalleri.htm

- the results are posted at

http://www.lysekilwomensmatch.se/page/183/resultat.htm

Most of the team will be headed home tomorrow, while Liz will be headed to France and Slovenia to work on some of her WIMRA duties – holding the WIMRA Annual meeting at the World Championships in St Quay, France and then running the first of the WIMRA match racing clinics in Izola, Slovenia. (Visit www.wimra.org to see what she’s up to there.)

Our next regatta report will be coming from the U.S. Women’s Match Racing National Championship (USWMRC) in Detroit in early September. The crew for that event will be Liz, Suzy, and a new addition to the team – Cory Sertl (1995 Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year and winner of the 2004 USWMRC).

Thanks again for all of your support!

Cheers,

The San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team

(Liz, Aimee, Lee, Karina, Chafee, Suzy and baby, Nicole)

Today was a cloudy windy day in Lysekil. And you might say it was a cloudy day for the SFWMRT, as well. We wanted to be bringing you better news, but…

After a one race break in the morning for the other half of the draw to finish up their leftover match from yesterday, we went on the water for six matches with a short lunch break in the middle. We sailed with the big genoas in the morning then switched to the smaller jibs in the afternoon when the winds got quite fresh. Our first match was a close race with Silja Lehtinen (FIN) which ended with a photo finish that went Silja’s way. Our second match was a win for us wire to wire over Silke Hahlbrock (GER – ranked 4^th in the world). Then we had a tough match with Malin Millbourn (SWE) that was another photo finish (again leaving us unlucky) with a couple of fouls and some contact at a flying finish that also resulted in her bow person going for a swim. (The fans on shore might have enjoyed that one a bit more than us.) Then after the break which included a demonstration from the Swedish Guard rescue team involving helicopters and swimmers, we sailed thre more matches. The afternoon results were about as rough as the morning – one win over Delphine Casas (FRA) sandwiched between losses to Marie Bjorling (SWE) and Linda Rahm (SWE).

So, we, along with two others, are done with our matches in the round robin and it doesn’t look good for us moving on to the quarterfinals. We ended with only 4 wins out of 11 matches, not our best performance. As happens when all of the teams at an event are quite good, there are quite a number of matches that could have gone either way. We need to step up our game a little to get some of those close matches to go our way. Lessons learned that now need to be applied!

We will now wait to see how the round robin plays out to see what matches remain for us. For those teams that do not make the quarterfinals, there will be “sail-offs” for the remaining places – seventh and eighth in the round robin will sail off for seventh and so forth down through twelfth. So we have at least one more match to sail. A bit of a let down, but another match nonetheless.

You should be able to follow the action at http://www.lysekilwomensmatch.se/

- the results are posted at http://www.lysekilwomensmatch.se/page/183/resultat.htm

- a link to the pairing list (who sails against whom in which match) can be found at the bottom of the results page

and the weather can be found at http://www.weather-forecast.com/locations/Lysekil/forecasts/latest which continues to look pretty good for the week.

Thanks for the good thoughts, sorry we didn’t make better use of them!

Cheers,

The San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team

(Liz, Aimee, Lee, Karina, Chafee, Suzy and baby, Nicole)

We had brilliant weather for sailing today! The sun was out and we had good breeze.

Since there are twelve teams and only six boats, the format is a little different form a lot of our regattas. At any given time only half of the competitors are out on the water and the other half are on shore, mostly watching from the shore or the grandstands (yes, they have grandstands here to watch sailing!). Our morning started with five straight flights of racing for us. We won our first match against Camilla Ulrikkeholm (DEN), then lost a match to Jenny Axhede (SWE), then one our match with Katie Spithill (AUS), then lost a very close see-saw match with Lotte Meldgaard Pedersen (DEN – defending champion of this event), then ended the morning losing to Nina Braestrup (DEN). So, we ended our day of sailing with 2 wins and 3 losses – not exactly what we wanted, but considering it was our first time in these boats as a time (and the first time ever in these bats for three of us), we feel our learning curve is good and steep and we be able to take our experience from today and move our way up the leaderboard tomorrow.

The other half of the teams went out in the afternoon and were only able to complete four flights as the breeze picked up from the 10-14 knots we had in the morning to a fresh 15-20+ by the end of flight 9. Tomorrow morning this group will finish up with one more flight then we will be back out on the water for our remaining six matches of the round robin.

We haven’t committed the results to memory, but you can find them on the web at the links below.

You should be able to follow the action at http://www.lysekilwomensmatch.se/

- the results are posted at http://www.lysekilwomensmatch.se/page/183/resultat.htm

- a link to the pairing list (who sails against whom in which match) can be found at the bottom of the results page

and the weather can be found at http://www.weather-forecast.com/locations/Lysekil/forecasts/latest which continues to look pretty good for the week.

Thanks for the good thoughts you’ve been sending our way! We’ll try to make better use of them tomorrow and bring home some more wins!

More news tomorrow!

Cheers,

The San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team

(Liz, Aimee, Lee, Karina, Chafee, Suzy and baby, Nicole)