Adam Minoprio currently second at Toyota Sopot Match Race

Hello again from BlackMatch on day 2 of Sopot Match,

After finishing off the remaining races in our round robin today, we had a good day with 5 wins and 1 loss, finishing with a scorecard of 8 wins and 3 losses to currently be lying in second place. Today's conditions were sunny with a light shifty offshore breeze, however there was the odd rain squall that would bring with it some big gusts that made for some very interesting racing. There are several teams who still have to race tomorrow to finish off their round robins to decide who will be in the top eight and progress through to the quarter final's, however the team currently topping the table is Keith Swinton from Perth who has a record of 9 wins and 2 losses. Keith has a world ranking of 29 and competed in the event qualifier last week so he is accustomed to the boats and local conditions, his team are sailing very well here but we did manage to get the better of him today as well as getting a very convincing win over their compatriot Torvar Mirsky.

We had an interesting race against world #14 Eugeny Neugodnikov. After gaining the edge after the pre start we were tack for tack with the Russian team to the first top mark where we crossed them to get the 'power of the right' and the starboard hand right of way. When Eugeny tacked back towards us the call was made to dial down at him and force him to either dip us, or tack back to avoid us, unfortunately for them they misjudged the situation and ploughed straight into us on port tack. The penalty went against them and we continued to race but the Russians fought back and regained the lead by the next bottom mark. They still had their slight advantage going into the final downwind but did not have enough room to undertake their penalty turn, so they waited for us near the finish boat to try and force a penalty on us. We have been in this situation many times this year so we knew what to expect, managing to catch them off guard and sail over them towards the pin end of the line to take the win.

Our loss today came against world #16 Eric Monin, from Switzerland. After a clean pre start we found ourselves heading to what we thought was the favoured right hand side of the course and let the Swiss team have the left in a big split tack start. Unfortunately for us though the right hand pressure did not come till later up the first beat and we found ourselves trailing by two boat lengths at the first top mark. We stayed in touch for the entire race but Eric and his team sailed very well in the extremely shifty conditions and defended their lead to win by half a boat length.

We felt like we were dominating in our pre-starts today as well as having good boat speed, this was very apparent when we forced double penalties on Torvar Mirsky and local talent Przemek Tarnacki. We are confident that we can improve on our tactics around the tricky race track for the remainder of the regatta and are looking forward to seeing who will make the top 8 tomorrow.

For more information on the event, live results/races and photos see the event website on http://www.yachting.com.pl/en/page/1/Sopot_Match_Race_2008
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