Dear Friends and Race Fans,

We finished the World Championships yesterday, September 13, 2006, in 1st place in the Silver Fleet by 19 points, proving ourselves the best of the fleet by a large margin.

Since you last heard from us, we sailed three races, two on September 12, and one yesterday. We won both races on September 12 with good, conservative tactics and superior boatspeed compared to the rest of our fleet. We started well towards the pin end, the left end of the line, and played the shifts up the left side. In both races we were in the top ten at the first buoy, and slowly ground down our other opponents.

In the first race of the day we moved into first at the last downwind mark before the finish reach. We were covering the team infont of us for the whole downwind leg and had the inside advantage at the last mark. We had to gybe twice before rounding the mark, and pulled off a "rodeo" gybe perfectly! (A rodeo gybe is where you gybe, or turn, twice in quick succession without changing the spinnaker pole from one side to another. Isabelle, the crew, has to hold the spinnaker out with her arm, becoming a human spinnaker pole! All the while Erin has to pick the perfect angle to steer in order to keep the spinnaker from collapsing.)

In the second race, we also moved into first at about the same place in the race through a different series of maneuvers. Erin positioned us perfectly on the wind of the boat infront of us, and we gybed on them five times. With the last two we accelerated right past them, again into first! Rolling snake-eyes definitely felt good.

Going into the last day of racing, we were sitting on a 19 point lead, with three teams between 19 and 26 points behind us: a German team, the Swedish team, and a Japanese team. We knew that as long as we finished midfleet or better, we would win the silver fleet. The one thing we absolutely had to avoid was being over early at the start. The conditions were good for the last race, 7-9 knots, with lots of chop and an underlying swell. We started right on time, but since the current was pushing boats over the line, the first start resulted in a general recall -- too many boats were over the line to get an exact count of who was and who wasn't over so they are forced to restart the race. The second start was a black flag: if you are over early, you do not have a chance to go back and restart -- you are automatically kicked out of the race. NOT what we wanted, so we planned to have a conservative start.

We started well back from the line, and down from the big pack at the boat end of the line, the favored end of the line. We played the first upwind way too conservatively, rounding the first mark in second-to-last with our Swedish competition in 1st -- eek! (Later on we would learn that they had been black flagged, so were over early.) We went to work, and passed boats steadily throughout the race, playing the shifts better upwind, and going faster downind. We crossed the line in 12th, more than good enough for we needed to win the fleet.

On the whole, we are very happy with our performance in Silver Fleet and pleased with the progress we have made as a team. During the past two weeks, we sailed for 12 days in a row, increasing our time on the water together tremendously from 6 days of practice previous to the regatta. We sailed our first races together, and are refining our teamwork, learning what it takes to maximize each other's performance.

Our next regatta is the Pre-Olympic Trials in October in Long Beach, CA. We will be training on the east coast in September, and will go out to California Columbus Day Weekend for a training camp with Coach Paul Foerster, fellow Americans Stu McNay and Graham Biehl, and Canadian women Jen Provan and Carol Luttmer.

Thank you so much for all of your support! We write from the airport, and are very happy to be heading back home (and back to work tomorrow, Friday). American food here we come!!

Best,

Erin & Isabelle