Difficult day

Ian Williams reports on his team's progress at Auckland Match Racing Cup

Local knowledge paid off today at the Auckland Match Racing Cup with three New Zealanders and a long time New Zealand resident making the final cut for the semi-finals. Dean Barker (Emirates Team New Zealand) led the standings with a highly impressive 15-3 scoreline. Following up were Cameron Appleton, Bertrand Pace and Chris Dickson (both BMW Oracle) on 12-6, 12-6 and 11-7 respectively.

The day started off with an hour long delay waiting for the breeze to fill in. It then quickly built resulting in the first flight of the day being held in about 14 knots of breeze, increasing to about 20 knots for the later flights of the day. The Williams Sail Racing team got off to a bad start, being adjudged OCS by the race committee against Cameron Appleton on a course which had become very one-sided due to a 20 degree shift. With so much of the beat and run on one tack, there was no way back and this set the tone for the start of our day.

Next up, we faced Magnus Holmberg (Victory Challenge) who had been having a poor regatta. Unfortunately for us, Holmberg had come back into some form and an epic race ensued. We started to leeward and ahead but a shift to the right left us with a slight deficit. Superior boathandling in the ensuing tacking duel allowed us to apply serious pressure and we rounded the top mark overlapped inside. Holmberg gybed early onto starboard forcing us to gybe in parallel. By getting enough gage to break the overlap we forced Holmberg to gybe back to the leeward mark and give us an inside overlap. A better drop allowed us to extend by half a length in the early part of the beat but a couple of missed shifts and a patch of chop allowed Holmberg back into the race.

Coming into the top mark, we went for a lee-bow tack onto starboard that the umpires adjudged was too close and we were penalized. Trying to offset the penalty at the top mark allowed Holmberg to pass and round ahead but a poor hoist again allowed us back into the race. We hoisted, luffed and cruised over the top of Holmberg. We and our on-board observer thought we had broken the overlap but unfortunately Holmberg and the umpires did not agree. Holmberg stayed high which meant we did not have the room to get the gybe in onto starboard to try to equalise the penalty. Eventually we lost patience and tried to force the gybe, but it was all a bit too close and we were penalised a second time, handing Holmberg the match.

Already feeling deflated, we had another excruciatingly close match, this time with Sebastian Col of France. A poor start left us battling to get past for 2 rounds. Twice we got our bow in front, but we could never break clear and a poor spinnaker hoist allowed the heat off the Frenchman on the last run.

By now we were 3 down for the day and on our way out of the regatta. However, the character of the young team I have assembled here (3 young Kiwis and a not quite so young Australian) showed through and we came out fighting against Chris Dickson. We led off the start but picked up a penalty after a dummy tack by Dickson. However, we immediately began to extend to the point that we were comfortably able to complete our penalty at the finish. Next up for us was Bertrand Pace. Again, the race was won on the start. We hooked into leeward of Pace and immediately luffed to push him the wrong side of the committee boat. Pace’s lack of response resulted in him picking up a penalty, but the umpires also adjudged that we had luffed too soon and penalised us at the same time. His lack of response also allowed him to start to windward and ahead and although we pushed hard and stayed close, Pace did not make the mistake we needed him to make.

Next up we faced Staffan Lindberg. Another very close pre-start saw us just squeezing in between the committee boat and a head to wind Lindberg. Perhaps trying a bit too hard, Lindberg then edged up a bit too far, sailing through head to wind and picking up a penalty for the error. On the tidally influenced course, we were able to extend from Lindberg for a relatively comfortable win before facing up to Dean Barker in our final race. We entered from the starboard end and forced Barker into the traditional dial-up. This position we held for about two minutes, with both boats eventually going backwards at about 3 knots. We were first to break away from the dial up and led Barker back towards the start line. Barker hooked us late, but we were able to tack for the committee boat end and out towards the favoured right hand side of the course. We used that advantage to pull out a two boat length lead which we were able to hold and then extend to four boatlengths coming into the second top mark. A twist in the spinnaker gave us some anxious moments but great work on the bow cleared the problem and we inflicted a third loss of the regatta on Barker.

That win left on us 9-9 for the series, in sixth place. Ordinarily, when you have beaten Ed Baird and Magnus Holmberg at an event you feel relatively pleased but we are left with a feeling of what could have been had we been a bit more clinical in finishing off our races this morning. Tomorrow, we have a fifth v sixth lay-off against Matthieu Richard and then we plan to enjoy the Auckland Festival which is running this weekend.

Results:

ROUND ROBIN TWO ... contd
FLIGHT THREE
Col beat Lindberg by 23s
Dickson beat Pace by 26s
Barker beat Holmberg DNF
Appleton beat Williams by 25s
Richard beat Baird by 1s

FLIGHT FOUR
Holmberg beat Williams by 18s
Baird beat Col by 46s
Pace beat Richard by 20s
Lindberg beat Barker by 10s
Dickson beat Appleton by 1.21s

FLIGHT FIVE
Pace beat Baird by 19s
Barker beat Richard DNF
Appleton beat Lindberg by 52s
Holmberg beat Dickson by 27s
Col beat Williams by 6s

FLIGHT SIX
Richard beat Appleton by 24s
Holmberg beat Lindberg by 21s
Williams beat Dickson by 27s
Pace beat Col by 1.30m
Barker beat Baird by 7s

FLIGHT SEVEN
Dickson beat Lindberg by 47s
Pace beat Williams by 16s
Barker beat Col by 1.54m
Appleton beat Baird by 37s
Richard beat Holmberg by 15s

FLIGHT EIGHT
Barker beat Pace by 42s
Appleton beat Col by 36s
Baird beat Holmberg DNF
Dickson beat Richard 21s
Williams beat Lindberg by 1.07m

FLIGHT NINE
Appleton beat Holmberg by 3s
Barker beat Dickson DNF
Pace beat Lindberg by 24s
Richard beat Col by 50s
Baird beat Williams by 10s