US Match Racing Championships, St Petersburg, FL: Pre-Regatta

by Anna Tunnicliffe

Our team is back in St. Petersburg, Florida today as we prepare for racing to start Thursday morning at the US Match Racing Championships. This week is the open division of the national championships. Racing runs from Thursday through Sunday.

It is a very good field of players including top names like Dave Perry, our USSTAG coach, Dave Dellenbaugh, Brian Angel, and Bill Hardesty. We are very much looking forward to racing everyone here, and we know the racing will be intense the whole time.

After we flew back to Ft. Lauderdale from St Thomas, on Sunday night, our team took to relaxing, catching up on work, and dropping some last minute weight so we would make weigh in. The weight limit for the open divisions is different to that for the women's. Our weight limit for this event was only 578 pounds, 22 pounds under our women's weight limit. Three weeks ago when we were here, we weighed in 12 pounds over the open weight limit so we knew we had a bit of work to do.

Anyway, we made it through our two days of dropping weight, and actually overdid it to the point of being 10 pounds light. But better to be safe than sorry, given that you never know what the scale is really going to say. After we weighed in at noon today, we went, as fast as we could, to get lunch and truly enjoyed every bite of food we could consume.

When our bellies were full, we went back to the yacht club to go for a short sail. We paired up with Dellenbaugh and did some drills to get ready. It was great practice, and we already learned a lot of new moves and tactics from him today.

Racing starts at 10am tomorrow (Thursday) morning, and will be live online through Kattack.

Anna Tunnicliffe