Today we finished the Internationaux de France Match Race 2011 in Pornichet, France on the Atlantic coast. It was a tough regatta, long days and plenty of racing. The regatta was sailed in the J80 yachts which we really enjoy and there is a real focus at this event on good fair racing on open water.
We sailed a very competitive round robin series finishing with a score of 7 wins 4 losses. Conditions throughout the round robin were quite light making for some good tactical racing. We had good speed and managed to sail well with only a few major mistakes. This score card put us in 6th place after the round robin. Unfortunately we missed the top four on count back meaning we had to sail further races to obtain a position in the quarter finals. We were paired against Simone Ferrarese of Itlay in this sail off, the Italians actually finished 11th in the round robin but because of this format got another chance. So with more to loose than our competitor we took on the Italian team in light and shifty conditions. We did well to keep it together and prevailed 2-1 in trying conditions coming from behind twice and out sailing our competitor.
Progressing to the quarter-final stage we came up against local sailor Francais Morvan. The stronger wind conditions we hoped for still hadn’t arrived so it would be more light wind sailing in the quarter finals. We didn’t begin the quarter finals well loosing both of the opening matches putting us in a must win situation for the final races. We made some big improvements with our starts and despite coming off the line even or behind we managed to grind out 2 wins to level the score. We did some great work in both of these races pulling off some really nice overtaking moves and gaining a penalty against our opponent on one occasion. It call came down to the last race and with the momentum on our side we were confident. Morvan again managed a nice start and won the favoured right side of the course. We thought we were quicker off the line but when we met it was even, Morvan then did a nice job of protecting the right side. Despite being quicker we couldn’t pull off a passing moving, Morvan sailed a solid race and learnt from his mistakes from the previous races. We were pretty upset with loosing 3-2 especially after the comeback from 0-2 down. In de-brief we realised we didn’t put enough enphasis on winning the right side and this was the game in the end.
Despite the disappointment we continued to push hard and defeated both the New Zealand teams Will Tiller and Reuben Corbett in the 5-8th place races to secure 5th, another solid result but still not what we are looking for. We are sailing at a really high level so just have to take the opportunity when it comes, which can’t be far away!!!
