We left ourselves too much to do today after our slow start yesterday, we had 2 must win races this morning and started well managing a win against Grimildi who was the overnight leader after winning all his matches yesterday. Unfortunately our second race against Nakamura didn’t quite go to plan.

The breeze was blowing onshore today from the north at around 8 – 10 knots during our races, which created quite an awkward sea state. This meant that boat speed and changing gears to suit the conditions were really important.

We dominated the pre-start in our first race against Grimildi and with a narrow lead off the start line defended the right side of the course. Grimildi kept the race close but we were sailing well and defended our advantage to take a comfortable victory.

This left us one more race against the Japanese skipper Nakamura. We again dominated the pre-start and forced Nakamura into a mistake, which gained him a penalty. We came off the start line slightly behind but picking some nice shifts up the first beat we gained consistently and came around the first mark right on his transom. With good positioning downwind we rolled Nakamura on starboard gybe and positioned ourselves slightly ahead. Nakamura then went into a double gybe to try and create some action to clear his penalty. We tried to counter this by gibing simultaneously but as Nakamura came back onto starboard the umpires felt we failed to keep clear and penalised us, which offset Nakamura’s penalty.

This gave Nakamura a slight lead into the bottom mark; we threw everything at him on the next two legs but Nakamura defended well and in the end took the win by a couple of lengths. This left us on 4 wins that weren’t enough to progress us to the next round.

Although this is a disappointing early exit from this regatta we can take a lot of positives away with us. We know we are sailing well and by removing the small errors, which crept into day 1 we are a sure we can beat anyone out here. With our next challenge the Knickerbocker cup in New York we will keep focused and take a lot of lessons away with us.

We would just like to thank the Chicago Match Race Centre for hosting a terrific regatta and providing superb facilities for us during our stay. The boats were in great shape and the unique on-the-water yacht club on the houseboat were an excellent initiative and provided a great platform to host the regatta.

Also thank you to our supporters SLAM and all our friends and family.

Slam Kiwi Match struggled today to convert good sailing into results as the Chicago breeze played havoc on the course today. The offshore breeze was shifting constantly from side to side and with the course set just off the break wall a lot of teams were struggling to pick the shifts.

We worked hard today on our communication and boat handling and feel we have a good handle on the boats and we’re working really well as a team. However some silly errors combined with some tough umpiring decisions meant that the scoreboard doesn’t reflect how we are actually sailing.

With 2 matches left tomorrow in the round robin we will need to ensure we make the most of all our opportunities to get us through into the quarter finals.