Where da Women at?

Part two of Grrrll Power

Last Wednesday at North Star Sail Club on Lake St. Clair (Michigan), the DRYA held one of their weekly seminars - this one about opportunities for women in racing and about making the transition from club racing to national and international competition. It was an amazing presentation given by three inspiring women, and it seemed fitting that it occurred at the yacht club where Dawn Riley started in the junior sailing program and raced during many of her formative years.

Sadly, I don't think Dawn would have been that happy to know that the men in the audience outnumbered the women by a 10 to 1 ratio or that the youngest woman in the audience was about to turn 38 years old. When I told Clean about the event, he urged me to write this article because he's not any happier with the boy-girl ratios in racing than I am or than Dawn would be. I expected a lot of women to attend the seminar, but by the time the curtains went up there were only five women in the audience. I kept hoping there was a minivan on its way, full of fun BYC or Crescent sailor girls or maybe some of the local clubs' youth teams, but we had no such luck. This area has spawned some of the top female racers in the game, including the newest BYC up-and-coming star, Carrie Howe. Dawn Riley, a sailing legend for too many reasons to count, was named Commodore of NSSC's junior sailing program at age 13. With so many inspiring women sailors and such a great racing tradition here, why is it that out of an audience of 50 sailors, only 5 were women? The DRYA didn't definitely didn't "sell" it as a women's event as they probably should have, but perhaps that's just one of many reasons for the small turnout.

Although just a small number of women attended, at least a lot of sailors came to hear the panel talk, and what they had to say was truly fascinating. A lot of competitive sailors will recognize the names:

. Lynn Kotwicki grew up sailing one-design on a Catalina 38 with her family back in the '80s. She took a several-year hiatus from racing, and when she returned to the sport she had missed so dearly she quickly made a name for herself. Lynn worked her way through the sport in various keelboats as crew, skipper, and team manager and has won championships at many levels in numerous OD and handicap classes.

Sandi Svoboda is a Chicago native who moved to Michigan in 1990 for her career. She stayed, in large part, because of the great sailing. Sandi has a history of kicking ass in various classes, especially sportboats like the Melges 24 and Ultimate 20. Over the past year she has gotten deeply into match racing, competing at Swedish Match Cup (one of the premiere international events) and qualifying for this year's U.S. Match Racing championships (with skipper Adam Hollerbach). Sandi has several national and international events on her calendar this year. She's also in charge of Bayview's fleet of Ultimate 20s, and is starting up a new adult learn-to-sail program on the U20 this year. See www.byc.com/adultsailing for details.

Deb Schoenherr has been sailing in Open and Women's championships since the 70's as one of the only women tacticians in the area. Her obsession with tactics and rules led her to become a US Sailing judge and umpire, and she was only the 8th woman in the world to become an ISAF International Umpire (in 2004). She has umpired the past 2 years at the ISAF Women's Match Racing World Championships, the Bermuda Gold Cup, and the Congressional Cup. This was clearly a group of no-bullshit sailors with experiences and results that warrant admiration and respect.

As they began to tell their stories, the audience was quickly hooked, and our interest only grew as the presenters explained what they had recently been up to and where they were off to next. Lynn and Sandi had just arrived back from the JP Morgan Women's Winter Challenge match races held on a reservoir in London in J/80s. They competed against some of the top-ranked women in the world while braving 25 knot winds and subzero temperatures. Lynn joked that it took something like 15 hours of air travel to get there and back, and the total amount of time they raced was less than 3 hours. After flying home, she would only have a few weeks to rest up and get caught up on her real job before heading down to the islands. Along with Schoenherr, she's crewing the Rolex and BVI Regattas on Bill Alcott's Andrews 68, Equation, in St. Thomas and Tortola. Lynn raced Equation for the entire four-month circuit last year and has done bits and pieces of it and loads of local races as well as local races for the last six years. The boats, races, and places that these sailors have had the opportunity to compete in would make most of us drool. The personal pictures they showed made most of the audience drool too, although I suspect a few of the guys were drooling for other reasons.

The presenters spent some time describing their own journeys through the world of competitive sailing and told stories of the ways they proved themselves to a community that is still, in part, hesitant to accept women as equals and that sometimes has difficulty accommodating women in their post-college years. When they opened the forum up to questions from the crowd, the first to speak was an older male sailor. His question was "How do I, as a man, get to do all of these cool things?"

Continued tomorrow.

03/08/06