Dear Friends,

This past weekend we sailed in the Mikey Murison Memorial Regatta, Friday, September 21st, through Sunday, September 23rd, our last training regatta before the trials. On the scoreboard at the end of the regatta, we were 1st of the women’s teams and 5th overall. Many thanks to the US Sailing Center Long Beach and the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club for running a fantastic event.

We sailed eight races over three days: two races Friday, and three each Saturday and Sunday. The fleet was a larger fleet than we will see at the trials, with seven international teams joining the racing. Friday and Saturday were atypical conditions: we sailed in the first rainstorm Long Beach has had in two years! Although our prime competition Amanda Clark and Sarah Mergenthaler beat us across the line by a couple of boats every race, the racing was in fact very close. Amanda and Sarah chose not to sail Sunday, and we continued to race well and triumphed over the res of the women’s fleet to win. The team placing second behind us was our training partners from France, Ingrid Petitjean and Nadege Douroux. It was exciting to beat them since they recently returned from racing in the Pre-Olympics in China where they captured the bronze medal. So we know we are racing at a high level. Below is a photo of light air racing Saturday, with the island of Catalina in the background.

We learned throughout the weekend, fine-tuning our small-fleet racing tactics. It was great to get a sense as to where the course area will be for the trials, what the marks look like, and how long the races will actually be. We had ups and downs throughout the weekend. The last race of the regatta definitely included both: the wind had built slightly, so we started the race in 10 knots of wind, and the breeze built from there. We had a great start, sailed a conservative first upwind hitting all the shifts in the middle of the course, and were first at the windward mark! We extended downwind, and were leading the fleet back up the course when we capsized clearing weed from our rudder — oops! We then passed some more boats, and finished the race 4th overall, just holding off a bigger men’s team on the overpowered reach to the finish. We are hoping that we got many of those racing glitches out of our system, and are ready to repeat the thrilling moments.

We feel confident that we are peaking at the right moment for the Trials. We have one more week of training with our French training partners, Ingrid and Nadege (who finished 2nd of the women’s teams). We will then take four days off, and return ready to race. Below is a photo of some R&R on the way in from a long day of practice! What’s wrong with this photo? (Hint: Erin’s sporting the “Farrarness”, Farrar Sails Trapeze Harness)

Thank you to all of you for your tremendous support.

Best, as always,

Erin and Isabelle

www.470TeamUSA.com

erin@470TeamUSA.com
isabelle@470TeamUSA.com