ALL LADY ONE-DESIGN RACING
Nine lady teams raced this past weekend at SYC in J/22’s on Lake Pontchartrain. The conditions were light and shifty on both days with the breeze range was between 4 and 10 knots. Lady of few words, Susan Danielson who won this regatta in 2002 also repeated with her winning ways in 2003. Susan is a regular in the local J22 fleet and sailed J22’s in the 2001 Rolex Women’s Keel Boat Championship in Annapolis, MD.
In the first days racing Susan scored finishes of 1,2,1. After losing the second race to Sparky Arceneaux who has won this regatta before when it was sailed in Luder 16’s and Rhodes 19’s, Susan put a loose cover on Sparky’s team for the rest of the series. For most of Saturday days racing, a persistent right shift was working the breeze from a Northerly direction veering as much as 60 degrees to the East. Sparky was quick to capitalize on this when she gybed early on the last leg of the second race to sail from a close third position to a first place finish. In the third race, the top three lady teams skippered by Danielson, Arceneaux and Bienvenu were quick to work the right side of the course which was favored by another shift of 20 degrees in that direction. Danielson finished first, Arceneaux second and Bienvenu third.
In the second days racing Louise Bienvenu moved up in the rankings by pulling off two second place finishes. Susan kept a loose cover on both the second and third place finishers while scoring first place finishes in the fourth and fifth faces. Sparky dropped back to third overall in the series by scoring finishes of third and fourth. Julie Comerly improved her sailing and finishes through out the series by finishing an impressive third in the last race in this very tough competition.
We checked in with winning crew Julie Bolyard, who said, “We had a great series, the nucleus of our crew has a lot of time in 22’s which definitely helps out on the boat handling…we did enough things right in this series to make up for the few tactical errors we had early on the weekend…it was great that we had good participation and it was nice to see the two teams that traveled in from Pensacola…we had a fun time racing and I think all the other teams did too.â€
This is a great event. Some of the other lady skippers included Debby Grimm, Anette Long, Margie Offan, Elaine Boos and Kim Kaminski. By the way, just recently I have had the pleasure of sailing with Margie Offan. Margie is quite the navigator! She provides great consistent accurate tactical information through out the race. Her talents are becoming less of a secret and she would be a great asset for any team planning to do next years Mexico trip in 2004. Overall, these ladies had a great weekend. The RC work was right on the spot with all the mark changes and the awards were very nice. In the first days racing there was definitely two fleets sailing the course. On the second days racing several teams improved their game and the gap was definitely closed with much tighter racing. The only thing that can be done to improve this series is to get some of these ladies access to the boats prior to the regatta. With several teams having very little time in J/22’s, a pre-regatta on-the-water J/22 sailing clinic may be in order.
-steinkamp
