SFWMRT at Carlos Aguilar Memorial Regatta - Day One
In case anyone was wondering, the Virgin Islands are AWESOME!!!
Yesterday we had what was meant to be a quiet 2 hour practice session in the morning followed by a relaxing afternoon exploring some of the finer beaches on St. Thomas. Well… Best laid plans… We left the dock at 10 and sailed down to the course area off “downtown” and set a leeward mark then sailed toward the seawall on starboard and tacked on to port and “BANG” the port chainplate blows out and we tack immediately onto starboard but not before the mast had buckled just above the boom. It didn’t come down, but it was broken. We sailed a few feet over to the seawall and tied up and called the yacht club. Rough start of the regatta. They gave us another boat and off we went for the next session – which was pleasantly uneventful.
Today, the men’s event (which is running parallel with ours with eight teams) had their first round robin in the morning. We sat on the seawall and watched. It was great – the racing comes right up to the seawall downtown and is great for spectating. The boys were done at about one and it was the girls’ turn. With six teams (Anna Tunnicliffe, Genny Tulloch, SFWMRT, Sandy Hayes,Louise Bienvenu, and Lee Icyda) our round robin would take 5 flights. It was really shifty and puffy and the runs turned into beats and immediately back into runs with sea planes landing in the pre-start area. Does this paint a good picture?
A highlight of our day was our starts – we won all of them and lead at 90% of the first windward marks. That’s where some of difficulties began! We had a little trouble with the “get ahead and stay ahead” philosophy today. We had a couple of boathandling issues and a couple of unfortunate shifts, but overall we felt that we sailed better than our scorecard of 2-3 shows for the day.
Tomorrow is another round robin in the morning – skipper’s briefing at 0745 and first start at 0900. A new start to the day!
Scores after the first round robin (from memory):
Tunnicliffe: 5-0
Tulloch: 4-1
Icyda: 2-3
SFWMRT: 2-3
Hayes: 2-3
Bienvenu: 0-5
The event is being hosted by the St. Thomas Yacht Club and their web site is http://www.styc.net/index.php Hopefully, there will be information posted there during the week.
The weather link: http://www.wunderground.com/US/VI/Saint_Thomas.html
Again a reminder that we will be posting these (and future) reports on Liz’s web site as well: http://lizbaylis.com/
Thanks for the support! Keep the good cheer rolling our way!
More news tomorrow!
Cheers,
Liz, Pease, Cory, and Jo Ann
The San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team