Runners up at the Inaugural Women’s America’s Cup!

Where to start, as usual these campaigns the build up feels long whilst the job list never seems to get shorter and then by the time the event comes around, everything seems to speed up and before you know it, it’s all over!

We spent 6 months training from our base just up the coast in Badalona, trying to get as many hours as we could on the water to get to know the AC40 as well as we could as well as learning as much as we could about the racing venue and as is what has become more normal, the event happened in conditions that we had never encountered - the phrase ‘it’s never normally like this’ seems to be being used more and more frequently!!

The selection trial to choose the 4 sailors who would represent GBR and the Athena Pathway ended up running until only 3 weeks before the event and was definitely the most challenging part of the campaign. When your reserve sailors are both Olympic Medallists, it shows how high the standard was that we had available within our British squad!

At our base in Badalona, we had the luxury of training with the Swedish team - Artemis Challenge and American Magic, representing USA so we tried to meet up with them on the water as much as we could to see how we would line up and I have no doubt that the time we spent training with them was invaluable when it came to racing.

The first day of racing was scheduled for the day following Ineos Brittannia’s win in the Louis Vuitton Cup Final which meant that loads of the team came down to cheer us off the dock, which was amazing. We were very aware that we were making history in this inaugural Women’s America’s Cup and I will never forget the noise of the cheers as we set of for racing that first day!

We knew we had to hit the ground running with the event format being as it was and that we did, by winning the first race by a significant distance, our work on time and distance certainly paid off as we managed to stay on the foil whilst many others fell off an ended up being late for the start.

Race 2 started in similar conditions and again we led to the top mark followed closely by Luna Rossa and Alinghi Red Bull Racing. At the bottom gate, the wind was very light and not a single boat made it through on their foils so it then became a race to get up and foiling again. Luna Rossa caught some breeze first and sailed off to win the race whilst we were hot on their heels. A total shut down at the finish line with the gradient breeze competing with the sea breeze meant that Alinghi got past us as we both drifted across the finish line in displacement mode!

After a short wait for the breeze to re-establish from the Garbi direction, we were instructed to change to the J3 and two more races were started in top end condition with a really tricky sea state. We had some wicked upwind speed and were able to extend ourselves on the upwind legs but Luna Rossa just had the edge on us downwind and manged to get past us on both of the final 2 races of the day.

We finished the day with 1,3,2,2 which we couldn’t be too dissapointed with and headed ashore with our head held high and ready for more racing after a lay day whilst the other group raced.

Head to the next blog for the lowdown on the rest of the event….