Semaine Olympique Francaise - Day five - Racing into the finals

1:05 AM Fri 30 Apr 2010 GMT

'Team Tunnicliffe at the 2010 Semaine Olympique Francaise in Hyeres, France' Guillaume Durand

We finally got racing again today at the Semaine Olympique Francaise regatta in Hyeres, France. We raced the quarter-finals and the semi-finals, winning each one three to zero, three to one respectively. These wins advance us to the finals tomorrow against Germany's Silke Hahlbrock.

It was a long day for the racers today. We met at 8:30am to draw boats for today's sailing, and finally got off the water at 7:30pm this evening. We were under postponement this morning for a couple of hours before we went out and raced three races. We were matched up against Spain's Sylvia Roca. We had some good close races with her, but managed to win all three of them.

After the quarters, we got about an hour off to let the Silver fleet finish their races before we went out for the semi-finals. We were matched up against France's Claire Leroy. We were looking forward to racing her, as she is a very good match racer and we always have good races against her.

The first two races we had even starts, and took the lead three-quarters of the way up the first leg and held on to the lead for the rest of the race, despite it getting quite close on the downwind legs.

The third race, we drew a penalty in the pre-start and rounded behind her at the top mark. Downwind we passed her, but couldn't quite pin her to the layline on the second upwind leg, and she passed us and took the win from us.

The last race, we had a very exciting and aggressive pre-start. With 20 seconds to go, we had Claire on port, low of the boat end of the line. She completed a tack, and we immediately avoided by tacking.

She then sailed down and there was contact between our boats. After some luffing and yelling, we had a good start to windward of her. She sailed over the top of us and slightly over the line, and then we pinned her to the layline.

The umpires talked for a couple of minutes as to who should get the penalty, and they ended up awarding it to her. We led her at the top mark, and held on for the rest of the race to advance to the finals.

Our goal coming into the regatta was to make the finals, which we have now done. We would like to finish with a Gold medal, and are very much looking forward to racing tomorrow.

In the other semi-final match up, Silke beat Australia's Katie Spithill three to zero to advance on.

We would like to thank our sponsors Carmeuse and Trinity Yachts for their continued support of our campaign for the 2012 Olympics in London. We would also like to thank USSTAG for their support.

by Team Tunnicliffe

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