From Carson Reynolds

This comes a bit late, bit it is a good report from some kids that did a nice job at the University Match Racing Worlds. Enjoy

After tons of fund raising and planning on May 21st I landed in Rimini Italy to prepare for the regatta. Things got started on the wrong foot immediately when the plane I was supposed to take was canceled and I arrived three hours later making it 1am. I went to the front desk at the hotel and the receptionist decided that I should sleep on the street. That was cool…

I finally swindled the receptionist the next day and got the key to both of our teams rooms and they arrived on the 22nd. Team USA representing American Universities was Chuck Ullman from St Marys, Nathaniel Campbell from Orange Coast College, Jon Bell from UCSB, Dave Hochart from UCSB, Payson Infelise from Orange Coast, and myself Carson Reynolds from Orange Coast as well. We checked out the fleet of Blusail 24s we would be sailing, they seemed pretty cool. Every boat was equal and fairly new.

On the 24th we started sailing, we raced 6 of the 11 teams we were to face. We finished the day with 4 wins and two losses, not a bad day at all. At the end of the day were tied for third with a few teams not having raced as many races as we had. Entering the second day of the round robin our only goal was to finish in the top four so we could make the final four.

May 25th we leave the dock and head out to being the round robin. We knew we had a tough day ahead facing Sweden the undefeated team and the top two ranked teams at the regatta who were ranked around 75th and 90th in the world. We finished the round robbing undefeated. We lost a couple of starts and threw the most rigorous tacking duel at those teams that we passed them before we go to the first windward mark. We showed that we were contenders at this event. After the first round finished we advanced to the second round in the number two position.

The trouble for us started at the end of the round robin. After sailing five races straight we sat on the committee boat for 2 and a half hours waiting for the rest of the round to be finished. The breeze built to around 17 or 18 and the boats started to break. The race committee decided that the racing should go on. We hoped into our boat and decided it was in good shape and we were ready to sail. We entered the starting line against the Swedes and they hit us dead on the transom after a two-minute dial down. They were penalized but we were far enough away from the line after the collision that it gave them the advantage to head back to the line in first. We stayed calm knowing we hadn’t lost a taking duel all day. Tired and wet we started the duel only to find out on the first tack that our port winch had been busted. We were fighting a losing battle against a team that made few mistakes.

Although down about the loss we headed to the dock after being on the water for more than 9 hours tired and ready for showers. The organizing authority had planned a little party at the local disco for the teams that night, I was spent from the day of racing but according to the other teams we represented ourselves in full American fashion.

The next day we started racing Croatia, this was their first competitive match race but they had sailed solidly. We lost the start and within 40 feet of the start line had passed them and sailed to one of our easier wins. The next race was against the Italians; the skipper had sailed with Mazcalzone Latino. We put up our breakdown flag because of the six inches of rudder play we noticed while preparing for a set, sailed directly to the race committee and were told “no”. They said to us later that the prepatory flag was up and we had not had our breakdown flag up. We lost the race, in my opinion, because of this tiller thing. Maybe not the actual tiller being broken but the fact that we all knew we were sailing a boat that was broken. The next two races make me want to walk away from sailing forever. After entering in 3-4 knots of breeze GBR was able to get a leeward start and cross us in the first crossing. We tacked with them and caught up so we were ahead but we couldn’t get the starboard advantage. We made a solid tack lined them up on starboard, pulled our protest flag and the on the water umpires gave us a green flag (meaning no foul). Disappointed we kept sailing did the same thing again another green flag three times it happened. We lost the race because we could not get the starboard advantage. Our final race of the round and the regatta was against my least favorite competitors the French. The way it worked was if we won the race we made the final four, if we lost the race they made the final four. They had a trick up there sleeve, the French umpire making the calls for the race. We had two iffy penalties called on us before the start but we were on fire and didn’t think about it. After spinning twice we were able to setup on starboard layline and head straight for the mark, which happened to be a collision course with the French. We lined them up waiting for them to tack and they did nothing, not even pretend to get out of our way. We were all excited at this point because this was the last windward mark and they were about to get a penalty. The flag goes up, green flag. The most ridiculous call I have ever seen in my life and it was made by a French umpire with a French team racing, suspicious. My team had been paying attention to us match racing and not the mark we now had to round. The French set the kite and we were leeward boat with luffing rights. I thought to myself if I luff them now they have come down to me and they will get a penalty. I luffed hard and they did not attempt to avoid, we hit and we get a penalty. Now I would understand if we had only been in that situation for a few seconds but this was a 10 plus second period and they came down on me.

This is the point where the race ended with two ridiculous calls and us being unprepared to set it was over. I turned to the French umpire and let him know what I though of him. His feelings weren’t hurt because he’s French and he has no reason to know how to speak English at a regatta where the official language of the event is English.