(Ft Worth, TX- Mar 10-12)- Fort Worth Boat Club hosts the Sundance Cup every year, a Women's Invitational Match Racing event (WIMRA). They put on a fantastic event and went above and beyond to make everyone feel welcome. It was an awesome venue and event in all respects. It was another strong turnout of women sailors for one of the more fun match events on the women's WIMRA circuit.
Sailing well in her first time on Lake Ray Hubbard was Kaitlan Storck. In the final Kaitlan beat Maegan Ruhlman to win the Sundance Cup. Third overall was Rebecca Dellenbaugh, fourth was Amanda Callahan and fifth was Nicole Buechler. A great time was had by all with a great variety of wind and weather, light winds to blowing a near gale.
One
of the sailors from White Rock Lake blogged about her experience- here
are some highlights of "Pam's Patter" commentary- "How do you take four
experienced female sailors and instantly find their strengths and
weaknesses and make them look like the first Jamaican bobsled team at
the 1988 Olympics? Women's match racing and then add a little wind for
good measure. Things happen fast and a couple of seconds here and there
of inefficiency or hesitation and the seconds add up quick and things
can and do get ugly. I spent two days doing a women’s match racing
clinic in Fort Worth and then two days of match racing followed by the
finals and I have only one thing to say … OUCH!! I’m bruised from head
to toe (Doug says I look like a leopard) and after watching the younger
and more experienced female match racing sailors in the finals, I feel
very old and slow.This was an incredible experience. Being horribly humbled isn’t fun but Dave Perry said he got his behind kicked in his first match racing regatta so I guess I’m in good company. We had a perfect score of 0-12 meaning we lost all 12 matches that we sailed. Another ouch!
However, being eliminated meant I was able to jump on an umpire boat and be a fly on the wall and watch the finals up close and personal. These girls are amazing sailors. I thought things were happening fast on my boat and we were just a little slow but things were happening so fast the umpires could barely speak fast enough to keep track of the movement. Two umpires follow each match and they get as close to the competitors as the competitors get to each other. At one point we were an obstacle and the girls were circling us. Each umpire role plays as the port or starboard boat and they do a sort of play by play in their own shortcut language ‘I’m port, give … tacking, done’. My favorite was ‘get off my boat, get off my boat’ when one umpire would inadvertently switch boats. I was impressed by the umpiring and realized I’d been looking for that shortcut language to run through my head when I’m racing to constantly keep track of who has rights." For more J/22 Sundance Cup Match Race Sailing information.