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Final Day of the Brasil Sailing Cup |
BlackMatch Racing
Hello from BlackMatch on the final day of the Brasil Sailing Cup,
Today we had two races to finish off the repercharge series, we had no chance of making the quarter finals but it was still very important for us to win these races. We won both of our matches convincingly which was a great boost of confidence for us as we believe we have now got a grip on the Swedish Match 40's, too little too late for this regatta but it leaves us in a good position for our next regatta in the SM 40's, the Portugal Match in July. Our first match was against world #9 Pierre Morvan, who took out the last regatta we did in France. It was great to be able to race Pierre again, we totally dominated him in the prestart and in windy, choppy conditions we lead from start to finish. The top four teams that remained after the quarter finals were: Bjorn Hansen, Paulo Cian, Ian Williams and Magnus Holmberg.
Congratulations to Paulo Cian and his Shosholoza crew, who came back from a 2-0 deficit against Bjorn Hansen to take out the 2008 Brasil Sailing Cup. It is an awesome start to the season for the Italian boys and they were definitely the stand out crew during the regatta.
Our next regatta together is Germany Match, this is the second event on the World Tour and gets underway on the 7th of May and we are looking forward to improving on our 9th placing here in Brasil.
Thank you to our sponsors FedEx Express, Line 7 and Waiwera Infinity, your continued support is making this opportunity for the BlackMatch boys possible. To our yacht club the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron thank you.
BlackMatch Racing.
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BlackMatch Racing 3rd at Morbihan |
BlackMatch Racing
Hello from BlackMatch on the final day of the Morbihan Match Regatta in France,
2-1 down in the semi final and we needed to come out firing this morning against local hope Alexis Littoz Baritel, two wins and no losses were what we needed to get into the final stage of the regatta so the pressure was really on. In our first must win race of the day we managed to gain an even start with Alexis, after a fierce tacking duel we gained the upper hand and managed to defend a narrow lead until the finish. This set up for a great show down to take out the semi final whist the other finalist had already been decided, Pierre Morvan managing to defeat Victor Lanier 3-1. In a tight pre-start we found ourselves trailing Alexis back toward the start line, we were both early so this meant we had the controlling position, forcing him to be early for the line, Alexis tacked in our water straight on to port which meant we had the right of way, we tacked to avoid which left us in a very undesirable position, as the umpires also deemed that Alexis had not impeded us. Alexis sailed off to victory having gained such a massive advantage off the start line, thus qualifying and ending our hopes of making the final. We felt we were very hard done by the umpires call, but have also learnt that it is not a wise move to put the outcome of such an important race into the hands of the umpires. Pierre Morvan went on to defeat Alexis 2-0 in the final while we took third place out by defeating world number 22 Victor Lanier, also by 2-0.
Congratulations to Pierre and his crew on sailing a near perfect regatta, we were hoping that we could have faced him in the final to redeem ourselves from our earlier effort against him, but some unforced errors and some unlucky calls ultimately cost us this regatta. We have learnt a lot yet again and it is a great build up to our next event the Brazil Sailing Cup, which starts in two days and is the opening regatta of the World Match Racing Tour. We also look forward to having a full strength team back with us for our next event, with our trimmer Tom Powrie rejoining us after an impressive 3rd placing on Mean Machine at the Farr 40 Worlds.
Goodbye from Adam, Dave, Nick and Gustav, we are currently at the Paris Airport awaiting our flight to Brazil, it will be a 14 hour journey which will see us arrive at 10.30am and then we will be straight into a practice session on the unfamiliar Swedish Match 40 boats.
BlackMatch would like to again thank their sponsors: FedEx Express, Ross Munro from Line 7 and Waiwera Infinity, their ongoing support is helping make this opportunity possible for us to be competing over here with the World’s best. To the RNZYS and everyone else, thank you for your support. Please also check out our website: www.blackmatchracing.com this was provided to us by Simon Dickey at Frontend Design.
BlackMatch Racing
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