The USA’s Sally Barkow staged a rally to defeat fellow countryman Dave Perry, 3-0, in the finals of the fifth Carlos Aguilar Match Race Sunday in the waters off St. Thomas.
Barkow, who has raced in this regatta four times, took second last year after a narrow defeat by Finland’s Staphan Lindberg. The sorrow of that defeat made this year’s win all the sweeter for Barkow and her crew – Annie Lush, Alana O’Reilly, Erik Champaign and Maggie Shea – according to a news release from Carol Bareuther, press officer of the event.
“We worked hard as a team in these last few days and it paid off,” said Barkow, who is ranked sixth in the women’s and 31st in the open match-race ranking’s divisions as of Thursday. Barkow was awarded a distinctive Ulysse Nardin precision timepiece for her win.
A rain squall blowing across the Charlotte Amalie harbor just minutes before the start of the finals left light and shifty conditions in its wake, Bareuther said. This didn’t deter Barkow, who handily won the first two matches against Perry.
In what proved the final match of the finals, Barkow led at the start and stretched her advantage to eight boat lengths by the windward mark. She lengthened her lead into a commanding 10 to 12 boat lengths by the finish, even though her team battled through a kink in the spinnaker that cost them a few seconds in boat speed in the last downwind run.
“It was so shifty,” Barkow said. “It was easy to get it either so right or so wrong.”
Perry, the author of "Understanding the Racing Rules of Sailing 2009-2012," has been Barkow’s match racing coach
“For me it was a win-win,” Perry said of his team’s second place finish and his student’s first. “Sally’s team is really good and they have evolved their game well. I was impatient. I had some advantages and gave them away. This either put me behind or put me further behind and Sally took advantage of that.”
Also Sunday, two past America’s Cup skippers went head-to-head in the Petite Finals. Ultimately, the USVI’s Peter Holmberg won 2-1 over the USA’s Dave Dellenbaugh. The result put Holmberg third in the final standings and Dellenbaugh fourth. Holmberg won this event in 2009.
In other team scores, Brazil’s Henrique Haddad finished fifth, the U.S.A’s Christopher Poole sixth, the USA’s Stephanie Roble seventh, the USVI’s Tyler Rice eighth, Denmark’s Lotte Meldgaard Peterson ninth, Brazil’s Renata Decnop 10th and Germany’s Sven-Eric Horsch 11th.
The four-day grade 2 match race was sailed in Inter-Club-24s. 49 flights or 135 races were sailed in total.
The St. Thomas Yacht Club and the Virgin Islands Sailing Association are organizing authorities for the CAMR, named for the late Carlos Aguilar, who was an avid sailor and match racer.
Supporting sponsors of the CAMR are the U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Tourism; Heineken Beer and Captain Morgan, distributed in the U.S. Virgin Islands by Bellows International Ltd.; Budget Marine; Hooters; Patron, distributed by Premier Wines & Spirits; Choice Communications; Bolongo Bay Beach Resort; Yacht Haven Grande; Gill and St. Thomas Yacht Club.
Final Results
1. Sally Barkow, USA
2. Dave Perry, USA
3. Peter Holmberg, ISV
4. Dave Dellenbaugh, USA
5. Henrique Haddad, BRA
6. Christopher Poole, USA
7. Stephanie Robles, USA
8. Tyler Rice, ISV
9. Lotte Meldgaard Pedersen, DEN
10. Renata Decnop, BRA
11. Sven-Eric Horsch, GER
The regatta was presented presented by Ulysse Nardin/Trident Jewels & Time. Trident Jewels & Time is a family business started by Peter and Nina Alwani in 1980 in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.
