Liz Baylis

Greetings from Lysekil, Sweden! The team arrived yesterday afternoon/evening in this resort town two hours north of Gothenburg after traveling most, if not all, of 24 hours! We settled in to our homes, found some food and got some much needed sleep. This morning we weighed in (no problem) and went for a practice sail. It was an absolutely beautiful day! The locals say it was the first nice day of a very rainy and cold summer (yikes – tomorrow is the first day of August!).

Tonight we had the opening ceremonies which included a trip for the skippers and visiting dignitaries on the tall ship, Goteburg, and a few speeches and a nice dinner.

Tomorrow we start racing – There are twelve teams here and six boats, so we will swap around a bit for the round robin. We sail the first five flights then sit out for five, then sail six in a row and sit out six to complete our 11 matches in the round robin over the first three days. So, we start first thing in the morning, then have a break probably all afternoon tomorrow, then we’ll see how the schedule sorts out.

You should be able to follow the action at http://www.lysekilwomensmatch.se/

and the weather can be found at http://www.weather-forecast.com/locations/Lysekil/forecasts/latest which is looking a lot better than originally forecast with no rain for a couple of day.

Now it’s off to bed as it’s just getting dark at 10:30 and the sun will be back up at 4:30.

Send some good thoughts our way!

More news tomorrow!

Cheers,

The San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team

(Liz, Aimee, Lee, Karina, Chafee, Suzy and baby, Nicole)

The San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team has moved up three places to lucky number 13 on the ISAF World Match Racing Ranking List!

Please click here to see the ranking list.

Our goal of reaching the top 12 by the end of the year is definitely well within reach!

We have three more events scheduled this year:
July 30 - Aug 4 : Lysekil Women’s Match Race - Gullmar, Sweden
Sept 5-9 : US Women’s Match Race Championship - Detroit, MI
Oct 17-21 : Rolex Osprey Cup - St. Petersburg, FL

Thanks for your continued support and encouragement!

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

The Lectronic Latitude has a nice article on the SFWMRT new ranking Looks like Auckland 2008 is on! Link to article

After a two hour delay waiting for wind, we finally got a chance to race. We won the final two matches of the second round robin (against Spithill and Hayes) to finish the round robins with a record of 12 wins and 2 losses. As we finished the race against Hayes, we heard the announcer on the Pier say “Baylis’ team is the winner of the 2007 Mayor’s Cup.” But we didn’t know the plan, until we saw the race committee had put up the abandonment flag over “A” flag – the racing was over and we had won the regatta!

The final results (this is unofficial):
1. SFWMRT
2. Hayes
3. Arms
4. Wainer
5. Lovell
6. Spithill
7. Bejar
8. Casas

We’re late for dinner, so we are off!

Thanks for the support!

Cheers,
The San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team
(2007 Mayor’s Cup Winners – Liz, Pease, Ruth, Denise, Shala, Sue, and Karyn)

Here’s a crew photo:

(back row: Pease, Liz, Shala,Sue, Denise;

front row: Ruth and Karyn)

Another good day of sailing for the Team in Long Beach. It didn’t start out great with a couple of very close races with multiple lead changes in each against Sandy Hayes and Charlie Arms that we came out on the short end of. We rebounded nicely from those two losses to win our next four matches to end today with an overall scorecard of 10 wins and 2 losses to remain on top of the round robin.

We had another day of great crew work. The team is really sailing well – the boat handling, communication, and gear changing are all fantastic. Our only problem early in the day was getting a good start, but Liz followed Pease’s advice later in the day when Liz asked the question “Do you want me to start to the left of her or the right of her?”, Pease simply answered “Just start in front of her” and that seemed to work well! If it were only that simple all of the time!

As most sailors know, when you go to a regatta the locals always say “The weather is never like this, you should have been here LAST week”. Well, the locals are saying it again because Long beach is not serving up its usual consistent breeze that builds during the day and shifts right in the afternoon, but instead we’re seeing an interesting variety of light and shifty conditions that are making things challenging and fun.

We haven’t seen the official results, but this is what we think they are (wins-losses):

SFWMRT 10-2
Sandy Hayes 9-3
Charlie Arms 7-5
Katy Lovell 6-6
Katie Spithill 5-7
Caroline Bejar 5-7
Claudia Wainer 5-7
Delphine Casas 1-11

Tomorrow the plan is that we will finish the last two flights in the second round robin then go into the semi-finals and finals. Hopefully the weather will cooperate with this plan.

If you want to have a look at the weather in Long Beach, check out: http://tinyurl.com/3xkwob

You can follow the action on the Mayor’s Cup web site: http://www.mayorscuplongbeach.com/

Keep the good thoughts coming!

Cheers,
The San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team
(Mayor’s Cup Team – Liz, Pease, Ruth, Denise, Shala, Sue, and Karyn)

Yesterday morning started with the all important weigh-in which we passed with flying colors thus allowing us to partake in a fantastic buffet breakfast at Long Beach Yacht Club! We then went out to the race area for a full day of practice in a nice 12-18 knot breeze, the most wind we’ve seen in our practice sessions so it was nice to practice in the fresher breeze.

This morning we got out on the race course and found no wind – doesn’t this always happen? But, after a little delay the race committee was able to run six flights of races before we came back in at 6. We saw everything from 4 to 10 knots of breeze from a variety of directions, so it was a challenging day of sailing. It was also a very successful day of sailing for the SFWMRT! We won’t bore you with the details, but we had six very close matches and won them all!

The crew work was fantastic and we really felt that our extra days of practice down here in the Catalina 37s over the past couple of months have been hugely beneficial. Knowing the boat and feeling confident that you can do a maneuver well definitely helps you feel comfortable that you can execute your plan.

We haven’t seen the results, but this is what we think they are (wins-losses):
SFWMRT 6-0
Charlie Arms 4-2
Katy Lovell 4-2
Sandy Hayes 4-2
Katie Spithill 2-4
Claudia Wainer 2-4
Caroline Bejar 1-5
Delphine Casas 0-6

If you want to have a look at the weather in Long Beach, check out: http://tinyurl.com/3xkwob

You can follow the action on the Mayor’s Cup web site: http://www.mayorscuplongbeach.com/

We will continue the double-round robin tomorrow and the forecast is about the same.

Keep the good thoughts coming!

Cheers,

The San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team
(Mayor’s Cup Team – Liz, Pease, Ruth, Denise, Shala, Sue, and Karyn)

One of Liz’s latest obsessions is maintaining her new backyard compost bin. Here’s a shot of the weekly maintenance: Turning the contents of the bin over and adding in new material and water, if necessary.

The San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team is getting ready for Long Beach Mayor’s Cup presented by St. Mary Medical Center – a Grade Two women match race regatta in Long Beach, California - Practically a home game for us! This will be our first of two “big boat events” this summer, as we will be sailing the Catalina 37s (the same boats as are used in the Congressional Cup) in Long Beach followed by the DS 37s (Danish Match Race Boats) in Lysekil, Sweden at the end of the month. Mayor’s Cup will see the return of Pease Glaser as tactician for the team after a work-induced hiatus. The remainder of the crew is a great group of Southern California sailors with extensive Catalina 37 experience: Ruth (Paulling) Schock from Huntington Beach trimming main, Shala Lawrence from San Diego trimming jib and spinnaker, and from Marina del Rey we have Denise George trimming the jib and doing mast, Sue Service doing pit, and Karyn Jones doing the bow.

We have had a couple of great practice sessions in the Catalina 37s over the last month and we feel good going into next week’s event.

Here’s a promo flyer for the event with photos and brief descriptions of all of the skippers.

mayorscupflyer.pdf

If you want to have a look at the weather in Long Beach, check out: http://www.sailflow.com/

You can follow the action on the Mayor’s Cup web site: http://www.mayorscuplongbeach.com/

or on the WIMRA web site: http://www.wimra.org

or on the SFWMRT web site: http://lizbaylis.com/

Look for the next update after the practice day on the 18^th.

Cheers,

The San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team

(Mayor’s Cup Team – Liz, Pease, Ruth, Denise, Shala, Sue, and Karyn)