Liz Baylis

Some exciting things are happening for the San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team!

The new ISAF Women’s World Match Racing Ranking List was published today. On the strength of a good showing by Liz, Lee, Karina, and Suzy at the BoatUS Santa Maria Cup last week, we have moved up again and are now in the 16^th spot. Our goal of reaching the top 12 by the end of the year to qualify for an automatic berth in the 2008 World Championships is well within our reach now! View the list here: http://tinyurl.com/2pwanm

The other big news is that Liz has accepted the position of Executive Director of the Women’s International Match Racing Association (WIMRA)! As most of you know, she has been working at helping revitalize WIMRA over most of the last year. The organization was formed to promote women’s match racing worldwide and advocate for the inclusion of a women’s match racing event in the Olympic Games. Over the next few months, in addition to politicking the powers that be in the International Sailing Federation (ISAF), Liz and others will be planning, organizing, and running match racing clinics in countries where currently there is no match racing (targeting countries like Slovenia, Turkey, Argentina, Korea, China, …) It is a pretty exciting time for women’s match racing and Liz is excited to be a part of it! For more info, please visit www.wimra.org

But, lest you think all of this will interfere with our own match racing program, don’t worry, we still have our sights set on our own racing!

The next event on the calendar for the SFWMRT is the Grade 2 Mayor’s Cup in mid-July in Long Beach, California. We’ll be sailing the Catalina 37s, the same boats that are used for the Congressional Cup (one of the most prestigious open match racing events). Our team will be comprised of all Southern California sailors (including Olympic medalist, Pease Glaser) with extensive Catalina 37 experience, so we’re looking for a good showing there.

Thanks again for all of your support and encouragement. We wouldn’t be able to do this without you!

Cheers,
The San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team
Liz, Lee, Karina, Suzy, Melinda, Chafee, Aimee, Pease, Ruth, Shala, Denise, Sue, and Karyn

Not such a good day for the team.

We won the first race of the day (2^nd race of the semi-finals) against Claire Leroy, then lost the next two to lose the semi-final 3-1. Sally Barkow won three races to win her semi-final match over Christelle Philippe 3-1. This set up the final of Sally Barkow (two time World Champion) against Claire Leroy (World #1 ranked team) and the petit-finals between the SFWMRT and Christelle Philippe (ranked #11 in the world).

The first race of the petit-final went to Philippe, but SFWMRT came back in the second race to even up the tables and set up a winner take all in the last race for third place. It was a tight battle all around the course, but Philippe held on to win by 5 seconds. So she picked up third and we ended in fourth.

The finals saw Sally Barkow and her team put an exclamation point on their victory with a 3-0 score.

Our scorecard might not reflect it, but we feel we sailed really well today and had great boat speed, boat handling, and tactics around the course. Our starts could use a little work, but our communication is improving and we have identified areas for improvement and are certain we can improve on it for the next event.

The final results of the BoatUS Santa Maria Cup:
1. Barkow
2. Leroy
3. Philipppe
4. SFWMRT
5. Souter
6. Lovell
7. Spithill
8. Fisher
9. Mariani
10. Hjorth

Here’s a nice photo of the team:

Thanks for all of your suport and encouragement!

Cheers,
The San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team
Liz, Karina, Suzy, and Lee