Liz Baylis

Just a quick note tonight because we just got off the water at 5:45, finished the debrief at 6:40, just got home at 7:15 and are due back at the club (after much needed showers) at 7:45. So, we’re late!!

We sailed another day with the cool shifty, puffy, St. Pete northwesterly. We sailed four matches in the morning, then came in for lunch (very civilized), then out again for four matches in the afternoon.

It was another good day of crew communication and teamwork for our team. We are feeling like things are coming together nicely for our upcoming season. Not too sure of all of the scores, but we won all eight of our matches today, so we are sitting on 13 wins and no losses. We believe Rachel Silverstein is in second with 9 wins, Sandy Hayes and Rosanna Ramos are tied for third with 8 wins.

Tomorrow we are scheduled to finish the second round robin, so 5 more matches before the cutoff time of 2 p.m. The forecast for tomorrow is about 12 knots (or 5-10 if you check another site) in the morning and decreasing during the day. So we are in for some different challenges.

The team arrived in St. Pete on Wednesday and settled in to our wonderful accommodations – the home of Ethan and Trudy Bixby. Fantastic hosts, especially considering that our “team” includes a six-month old baby, Suzy’s daughter Nicole, and our team “nannies”, Suzy’s mom (Boots) and step dad (Andy). This is a whole new world for the SFWMRT!!!

Yesterday we had a morning of practice. This was fantastic for us to get the team all on the same page before the clinic with Betsy Alison later in the day. The afternoon was spent with a short chalk talk session and then some on the water coaching and drills. Again it was another opportunity to fine tune our communication and boat handling. Someone also commented that it was a nice chance to get acclimated to a bit of humidity and light air!

Today dawned with the passing of a cold front and actually a bit of a chill in the air and the prospect of WIND all day! We left the dock for a couple more hours of clinic, but the big difference today was wearing foul weather gear and sailing in the breeze. It was very shifty (think 30 to 50 degree shifts and puffs!) in which was fun to play. After the clinic we came in for lunch and the skipper’s meeting and umpire briefing for the regatta.

So, after lunch we finally got the opportunity to do some racing!

We sailed the first five matches of the first round-robin. We’re not sure of the overall results, but we won the five matches we sailed (against Karen Parks, Louise Bienvenu, Rachel Silverstein, Verian Aguillar, and Sandy Hayes).

Tomorrow we will continue the round robin and have a full day of racing. The forecast is for much the same tomorrow, so it should be more fun.

The San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team has been training and fundraising and is now ready to start racing!

We started the year with a fundraising campaign that has brought in just over half of our 2007 budget. Thank you to those of you who have contributed. Without your support we would not be able to competing in these events (if you still have those envelopes cluttering up you desks, the Belvedere Cove Foundation would love to find them in their P.O. Box!).

We have had some very productive training sessions in Belvedere, Vallejo and Santa Cruz over the last few weeks. Liz practiced against Craig Healy and his SFYC team to help them prepare for (and win) the San Francisco Cup; the team sailed against Charlie Arms, sailing director at Cal Maritime Academy for some great practice starts (with help from Sutter Schumacher and boyfriend Sean, Kate Ross, and Jesse Cartee); and this last weekend the team had a great session against Skip McCormack (and Karen Loutzenheiser, Sarah Deeds, Emily French, and Jody Taliaferro) in Santa Cruz. Overall, we feel we are ready to move on to some races that count!

We take off tomorrow for the first regatta on our exciting 2007 schedule, the 2007 Rolex Women’s Match in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The team for this first event includes Liz Baylis – skipper; Lee Icyda – tactician, Karina Shelton – trimmer; and Suzy Leech – bow. We’re excited about this team which will be the core for our first three events of the year (with the addition of Melinda Erkelens for the second event in Calpe, Spain). The experience that this team brings with World and National Championships on the resumes should make for some fun competition!

For the 2007 season we will be trying some new technology to keep our friends updated: In addition to the daily emails, we will be updating the San Francisco Women’s Match Racing homepage (http://lizbaylis.com/home/sfwmrt/) and the San Francisco Women’s Match Racing blog (http://lizbaylis.com/category/sfwmrt/) with those same updates as well as, hopefully, some other notes and photos.

If you want to take a look at the venue and the event site:

St. Petersburg Yacht Club homepage:

http://www.spyc.org/Club/Scripts/Home/home.asp

Rolex Women’s Match homepage:

http://www.rolexwomensmatch.org/RWM/2007/Frontpage.html

St. Pete weather:

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/forecast/MapClick.php?CityName=Saint+Petersburg&state=FL&site=TBW

Thanks again to all of our practice partners, supporters, friends, and family.

April 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.

– Mark Twain