Disappointing sixth

British match racer Ian Williams describes how he fared at this week's ACI Adris Cup in Croatia

Williams Sail Racing finished the ACI Adris Cup in 6th place after a disappointing final day. Going into the last day of the double round robin, we were holding an 11-5 record with four races still to sail and were sitting in fourth place, very close to second and sixth overall.

The first race of the day, conducted in about 14 knots of breeze, was against Johnnie Berntsson who had been on fire in the lighter conditions earlier in the week, only losing two races of his first 16. We came off the line to leeward and ahead and soon were able to cross Berntsson’s bow to the right hand side of the course. The obligatory tacking duel ensued with us protecting the right hand side each time but we were not able to shake the Swede off and we rounded the top mark with only a boatlength of clear water between us. That was soon swallowed up and we went down the whole run overlapped. As we came towards the leeward mark, Berntsson crossed close behind us to the right and was able to take us past the mark, although picking up a penalty in the process. We trailed round the bottom mark and spent the next beat trying to stay as close as possible, a task that was made more difficult by the presence of another race just ahead of us casting quite a big wind shadow. Berntsson chose to do his penalty towards the top of the beat which left us overlapped again around the top mark. However, despite positioning ourselves well in the early stages of the run, we didn’t quite have the downwind boatspeed needed to affect Berntsson’s air and he was able to hold on for the victory.

This left us with a must-win race against Paolo Cian whom we had started the day level on points with. In a very dramatic start, we picked up a penalty about 10 seconds before the start but both boats were over the line at start time. We were the first to return and as we gybed round the front of Cian, he put his bow down and into the side of us, for which he picked up a penalty (as the boat still returning to the line). That left us even on penalties and with a small lead on the right which we protected and extended up the beat to round three lengths ahead. However, our downwind speed again let us down and Cian was able to sail up to us and sit close to leeward on port gybe. As we got to the lay-line for the bottom mark, we put the gybe in ahead of Cian but the umpires adjudged it to be too close and penalised us with a red-flag penalty, saying that the control in the match changed by our infringement. Once we had done the penalty after the bottom mark, we were now 3 lengths behind and although we closed a little up the beat we never really looked like threatening Cian’s lead.

Those two losses left us facing elimination from the event and next up we had Peter Gilmour. We started snug to leeward of Gilmour and forced him to tack away early but when we tacked to cover, a match ahead of us came around the bottom mark and tacked on top of u. That forced us to tack away and then tack back (the shift was left at the time) and those extra tacks enabled Gilmour to extend enough to cross back well ahead. We managed to stay in touch around the course and at the last top mark, as Gilmour hoisted his spinnaker it touched our shrouds as we came up the beat. Unfortunately though, the umpires did not see the infringement and Gilmour was able to finish ahead.

We were now definitely out of the running for a semi-final spot but there was still plenty of pride at stake in our last race against Mathieu Richard. In an almost carbon-copy of the race against Cian, we were both over the line at start time with us positioned to leeward of Richard holding him up. Again we returned first and again our opponent hit us as we gybed round the front of them and again they picked up a penalty. However, during the pre-start maneuvering the leachline in our genoa had snapped and the genoa leach was now flapping away. At the first cross we were comfortably ahead and protected the right, but at the second cross Richard had gained and he was able to duck us and cross to the right. That allowed him to round the top mark ahead and again our lack of downwind boatspeed cost us as Richard slowly pulled away. We hung in well up the next beat with our flapping genoa, but as we came to the finish Richard was just able to complete his penalty and cross the finish line ahead of us.

So what had looked like such a promising day for us did not turn out as we had hoped. We made a couple of errors under pressure but really felt that it was never meant to be our day, with a mixture of a slow boat, less than favourable umpire calls, some unfortunate damage and other difficulty with traffic on the course. I think that sailing with a new crew (two of whom I only met for the first time on arrival) meant that we were not really able to deal with those things as well as a well practiced crew might.

The teams that made the semi finals were Johnnie Berntsson, Peter Gilmour, Paolo Cian and Mathieu Richard. Berntsson beat Cian 3-2 in the semi-finals whilst Richard dispatched Gilmour 3-1. Berntsson then won the final 3-1 and Gilmour the petit-final 2-0. Congratulations must go to Johnnie who ended the regatta with a 24-5 record against a top level field.

This result moves us on to the World Match Racing Tour leaderboard – we’re now placed 7th on the Tour. We go on to Match Race Germany next week hoping for a more satisfying result.