Genny Tulloch Reports: "The Boat U.S. Santa Maria Cup finished up yesterday, with a typical shifty and puffy Annapolis day giving us a very intense and long day of racing, where we finished second overall after going 2-3 against #2 world ranked Claire Leroy in the finals. Sailing with me was a brand new team, with Molly Carapiet on main, Katie Pettibone on Jib/spinnaker trim, and Jenn Chamberlin on the bow. We worked on our communication throughout the double round robin, and were seeded fourth against top seed Sally Barkow for the semis. We went 1-1 Friday night, tying it up. Saturday morning we lost initially then won the last two races against Sally to finish 3-2 in the semis, leading us to meet Claire Leroy in the finals, as she had defeated Anna Tunnicliffe's team in her semis. Both the semis and finals we went to the maximum five races, so at the end of the day we were joking that we’d gotten our money’s worth with the most of races we possibly could have done. The racing was difficult with big shifts and pressure differences throughout the day and across the course, and a lot of the wins were determined by who had the better start headed to the first shift. But with the directional swings and pressure changes the pre-starts were very interesting and calling laylines and time to the start were big stresses and very important for winning the start headed the right way. Claire won the first race, we won the second, then the third was a very close fight. To read on about the racing and see more great pictures from the event, check out my website http://www.getsailing.org.
I’d especially like to thank my teammates this week for doing an excellent job, our housing hosts Dick and Phyllis for taking care of us, our regatta hosts Nancy and Phil for keeping us entertained (and well-fed!), and the club and all of the volunteers for putting on an excellent event. I also would like to thank USSTAG for their support. Next up for me is the Kiel Week World Cup event in Germany; I leave on Tuesday for training in the Elliotts in Chicago then straight to Germany."