This season we were fortunate enough to sponsor another young local sailor to compete in a Grand Prix event, Peter Miller & Miller Match Racing at the 2011 Bermuda Gold Cup. Peter is a student at Connecticut College and an active team member on Conn's Sailing Team, hailing from Bermuda, Peter was one of two young locals chosen to compete in this year's Gold Cup, a worldwide Match Racing Circuit with various stops across the globe. For this event we outfitted Peter and his crew in SLAM "Bermuda" Hissar Shorts and Henri Lloyd Atmosphere Tees, topping everything off with our SB FlexFit Trucker Hat, they looked sharp. Upon Peter's return from the Gold Cup, he wrote up a post-event re-cap for us, congrats to Peter and his team for taking on some of the world's best !!!
From Peter:
"Although my first World Match Racing Tour/ Grade 1 event was not my most successful outing, I took away many valuable lessons that will be massively important for the rest of my match racing career. While I was disappointed to not come away with any wins, just having the experience of racing against the big guys was a thrill in itself. The group that I was placed in was very tough (as were all the groups). In my group I had world’s number 1, Ian Williams, #7 Mathieu Richard, #13 Eric Monnin, #14 Laurie Jury, #17 Damien Iehl, #22 Simone Ferraresse and former America’s Cup skipper Terry McLaughlin. Needless to say, the odds were stacked against me. We had some close races with a couple of those guys, which was encouraging Like I said, many lessons were learned; most importantly was that I need to put in a lot more hours into match racing. I only really started match racing this summer and some of these guys have been racing the better part of my life. Repetition and time in the boat match racing is the only way to think five moves ahead of the other boat. I felt as though my competitors knew what my move was before the thought had even popped into my head. At the top level, match racing is much faster paced and the ability to make decisions before situations develop is of the utmost importance and that only comes with more and more match racing experience.
Crew communication is also vital. Unfortunately I had to throw together a crew at very short notice, so I ended up with people that I have not match raced with before. I found that my head was in the boat or focused on the other boat that I could not even look out of the boat towards the line or up the course during the prestart. I needed my crew to communicate the necessary information to me, such as laylines, time to burn, time to the line, time to laylines. All that information had to be fed to me before I needed it, in order to make the proper calls. That takes time for crew to get used to the way the skipper sails, how much information he/she needs and when to give it to them. We got better at it as the regatta went on, but sailing with a consistent crew is a must for competing on the world stage. Being used to the boats. The IOD is a totally different monster. Heavy and un-manoeuvrable it really is completely different match racing these boats. While I got a fair amount of tiller time in the IOD’s before the event, most of these guys had way more experience match racing the boats. I felt as though my tactics were very solid, I thought I was adjusting quite well, but I just couldn’t quite put the boat where I wanted it to go. Hopefully I will have more time at home next fall to put an IOD through its paces and become an expert!
While going win less at a regatta isn’t the most encouraging thing, learning those valuable lessons competing in the Gold Cup has made me hungrier to do more match racing. It was certainly special to sail in a regatta that I had watched as a young boy against professionals that I idolized. If you asked me even a year ago,I never would have dreamed that I would be taking questions at a press conference or sailing against the world’s number one match racer. A totally cool experience, and as I told the reporters, I’ve never had so much fun getting my butt kicked!This summer I could be looking at a full campaign to climb the rankings into the top 100!
And A HUGE Thank You to Sound Boatworks for providing Miller Match Racing with gear. They deserve credit for making us look legit!
Peter
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