NYYC DAY 1 GLOBAL TEAM RACE REGATTA Team update 22/7/22
Team Coach, David White, has provided the following update after Day 1 of racing of the Global Team Race Regatta at New York Yacht Club.
Our day started off with a welcome briefing at 0830hrs from New York Yacht Club’s Commodore Lotz, who spoke about why he was trustee to the Global Team Race Regatta and praised team Australia and Japan in particular, for making it a world-wide event. All teams then had to pull colours from a hat to decide which boats they would be sailing from the impressive 20 Sonar boat fleet of NYYC. Following this, we had an umpire chat and then it was over to the waterside to rig up the boats that are stored on Fort Adams.
The format of the day was a round robin of 11 teams which had 55 races for the day. Each race takes approximately 11 minutes with most races being decided right on the finish line. The course we sailed was a digital M, which impressively had a start pin and finish pin that were “Mark Bots,” which have no lines/anchors on them and are GPS controlled with propellers; the same used at Sail GP and America’s Cup.
The Team Sorrento support crew made up of Coach David, Helene and James Gibson, spectated from Commodore Lotz’s rib, who really made an effort to get us close to the action. With this regatta, there are no easy races and all sailors are decorated national sailors. Most of these sailors are very familiar with the Sonar boats, however that didn’t worry the SSCBC team!
Our team set an initial goal to qualify for Gold Fleet and to make sure we improve each day with the aim of peaking for finals on Sunday. Our team succeeded in achieving our first goal and has qualified for Gold Fleet after Day 1! We got a few monkeys off our backs by beating some of the top teams in the competition, including the Royal Thames (who won the competition in 2018) and New York Yacht Club.
At our debrief, I made sure to pass on the well wishes to those who have messaged in. We also talked about how we can definitely improve and really challenge the top teams. We just need to tweak a few things to get us right in the mix.
After our debrief, we raced back to the Club where it was a great chance to mingle with the other teams/umpires/race officials, talk about what happened on the water and then finished up with a beautiful sunset and a cannon going off with the flag being lowered.
Thank you again for all your support. We look forward to doing SSCBC proud again.
You can get live updates from the team by tapping this link https://chat.whatsapp.com/GKWxmWCxzzuCNi2LHBWey2
The Regatta Page has live scores and photos and is here https://nyyc.org/2022-global-team-race
