Dear Friends,

Despite our silence over the past month, we have been incredibly busy racing and training. The highlight of this month was US Sailing’s Rolex Miami Olympic Classes Regatta, that finished this past Saturday, January 30th. There, we placed 7th overall in a very talented fleet. Of the top women’s 470 international teams only four were missing. Earlier in the month, we raced in the 470 North Americans as a warm-up regatta, placing 5th overall out of the women. While we work on updating our website, you can find photos of the events on Isabelle’s Facebook page — please “friend” her! The next regatta on our calendar is the Princess Sofia Regatta in Palma de Majorca, Spain, on March 29th. Between now and then we will shipping our boat, “The Corner Office”, to Europe, hitting the gym hard, going to a US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics training camp at the Olympic Training center in Colorado Spring, and cheering hard as US athletes compete in the 2010 Winter Olympics.

We are ever confident that we have what it takes to win a Gold Medal in Weymouth, England. Despite having full time occupations — Erin as a commodities trader at Louis Dreyfus and Isabelle as a law student at NYU — we are still near the top of the women’s fleet. We are committed to working as hard as we possibly can to be poised for the Olympic podium. But, we need your help! Our campaign has always depended on the generosity of our individual supporters. You are all the larger team in our Olympic effort. All donations to our campaign are tax deductible, and we appreciate every single one. Please send checks to:
Sailing Foundation of New York
c/o Isabelle Kinsolving Farrar
326 East 82nd Street
Apartment 5C
New York, NY 10028-4117

Many “thank you’s” are in order: to our product sponsors: Kaenon, Harken, and Samson Ropes. To the Stonington Harbor Yacht Club Champion’s Fund for their support, and to all the other individuals who support us. To our coaches, Skip Whyte and Jonathan Farrar, for their help before and during the regattas. Very importantly, we would like to thank Rick and Connie Bischoff, and Paul and Peggy McMahon for their generosity in housing us for many, many days this winter. Finally, we would like to thank the sponsors and supporters of the US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics.

For details from the last two regattas, please read on!

The 2010 470 North Americans were raced over Martin Luther King, Jr., Weekend, January 16-18th. We were pleased to have coach Skip Whyte working with us again; the 2008 World Champion band is back together! We have been experimenting with a new mainsail design, and seized this opportunity to test the mainsail in the most important setting: racing. The fleet was extremely talented, as both men and women’s 470’s were racing together with 44 boats on the line. Men and women were scored together in individual races (only one 1st, one 2nd per race), but separated on the regatta scoreboard. The first day of racing was windy, and all of our training in strong winds this winter paid off. We finished 19th and 18th in the two races of the day. Sunday and Monday brought much lighter winds, and we placed 12th, OCS, 26 and 21st. The starting line was short and crowded with both the men and the women’s boats, and our starts left a little something to be desired. Once we got off the starting line we struggled to find top boat speed with the new sail design. By the end of the weekend, we had made the important decision to discard that particular main sail design.

On to the next regatta! US Sailing’s Rolex Miami Olympic Classes Regatta was this past week, Monday, January 25th through Saturday, January 29th. The fleet this year was particularly strong, with almost all of the top international teams racing. Also exciting was the fact that there were 10 US women’s 470’s registered. It is great to see our local fleet growing with so much young talent.

The first day of the regatta, Monday, January 25th was a total bust. Severe thunderstorms were forecasted for mid-afternoon, and the race committee decided to keep us on shore and cancel racing. Needless to say, the thunderstorms never materialized, and the sailing conditions were beautiful, with wind in the mid to high teens. Monday was the most wind we saw all week. Except for a brief period of 8-10 knots in Race 1 on Tuesday, January 26th, the rest of the regatta was sailed in shift and light winds — 6 to 9 knots. Small teams ended up mostly dominating the event, with the 2010 World Champion Dutch team finishing behind us in 9th .

On day 2, Tuesday, January 26th, we had a solid day, finishing 9th, 1st, and 4th in the three races, and were in 2nd place overall at the end of the day. We were able to play the shifts upwind very well, and were going fast downwind, passing boats to move up to 1st in Race 2! The top of the fleet was very close though, with only four points separating 1st and 6th places.

Day 3, Wednesday, was not our day. Even though we continued to play the shifts very well upwind, three bad starts made it hard to catch up. We finished 8th, 8th, and 9th. At the end of the day we were in 6th overall.

On Day 4, Thursday, we resolved to have much better starts — and did! We finished 8th and 4th in Races 7 and 8. A highlight of the day was the last leeward mark rounding up to the finishing reach in Race 8, a trapezoid outer loop. On the last downwind, FRANCE 12 was ahead of us and we were determined to catch up. We played the downwind left well, going fast, and at the end of the run we were converging on the leeward mark. FRA 12 were already on port gybe, ready to head up around the mark onto the finishing tight reach. We were coming in on starboard, had buoy room on them, but had to complete a 130 degree gybe around the mark and keep them from rolling us! As we approached the mark, Erin headed up at FRA 12 to make them slow down. Then, Isabelle executed a perfect, super speedy gybe of the spinnaker pole while Erin kept the spinnaker flying and the boat on track. We crossed the finish line easily ahead of FRA 12! At the end of the day, we had moved up to 5th place overall.

Day 5, Friday, was another light air day. We continued to have good starts. In the first race we had a great start, played the left side of the upwind, and were in great shape until the we overshot the windward mark in a left shift and current that was also pushing us over the line. We finished Race 9 in 10th. Race 10 was much better, and we crossed the line in 4th. Unfortunately, the two teams nearest to us, FRA 12 and ISR 311, had better days and passed us. Going into the medal race, we were in 7th place overall, with 55 points: 6 points behind FRA 12 and 8 points behind ISR 311. 4th place was also within reach, as FRA 9 was only 13 points ahead. We knew that a good medal race could move us up the scoreboard. The forecast for Saturday was for 13-18 knots, and we were looking forward to a change in the conditions!

Saturday, the day of the medal race, ended up being light — again. The race was a windward-leeward twice around. Our plan was to win the race, hurt FRA 12 and ISR 311 when we could, and hope that things went our way. Before the start we tailed ISR into the pack of boats at the boat end of the line, forcing them to have a bad start. We had a great start at the pin (see attached photo), played the better pressure on the left, and were 1st at the windward mark (see attached photo)! ISR was far behind, but FRA 12 was right on our heels in 2nd place. We maintained 1st place until the second windward mark, but FRA 12 passed us on the last downwind to the finish. We almost caught them right at the end with a beautiful gybe near the finish line, and finished only 8 feet behind them.

Congratulations to fellow US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics members Amanda Clark and Sarah Chin who finished 1st in the women, their first regatta back after finishing 12th at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

If you are still reading this e-mail — thank YOU for sticking with us! We are thrilled to be racing, and looking forward to making more progress.

All the best,

Erin and Isabelle

US Sailing Team Alphagraphics

Campaign for 2012 Olympic Games
www.470TeamUSA.com

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