Liz Baylis

The first day of the 2008 BoatUS Santa Maria Cup dawned with, a passing cold front, twenty degree cooler temperatures, and 15 knots more breeze than yesterday – What a difference a day makes! The breeze maxed out at seventeen knots and then faded as the day went on to end in about the 5 knot range. We sailed seven flights and the team had a pretty good day. We had some very close races and most of them ended with us coming out on top, but not without some very tight (overlapped at the finish in two of the wins) races. Good fun sailing!

Here are the results after the first day:

Name Country Wins-Losses

Barkow, Sally USA 6-1

Baylis, Liz USA 5-2

Le Berre, Anne-Claire FRA 5-2

Carapiet, Molly USA 4-3

Philippe, Christelle FRA 4-3

Mariani, Lorenza ITA 4-3

Lovell, Katy USA 2-5

Anderson, Derby USA 2-5

Béjar, Caroline Martins de Castro BRA 2-5

Fisher, Jo Ann USA 1-6

We just had a great dinner at one of our favorite Annapolis restaurants – Lemongrass on West Street, with our AWESOME hosts – Sharon and Jeff Borland. They have taken care of us for years in Annapolis – a second home. Thanks, Jeff and Sharon!

Okay, off to bed!

If you would like to follow our progress on the web, the event web site is www.santamariacup.org and they are usually pretty good at posting timely info.

Thank you for your continued encouragement and support!

Cheers,

Liz, Karina, Suzy, and Pease

The San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team

The San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team has taken to the water again in Annapolis, Maryland for the 2008 BoatUS Santa Maria Cup. We have a great team for this event – Liz, driving; Pease Glaser –tactics, Karina Shelton – trimming, and Suzy Leech – bow.

We arrived on Memorial Day morning and sailed the North Sails boat, loaned to us by Greg Fisher, North Sails Chesapeake, for our Monday practice session. We sailed for a few hours on our own working on boathandling, then hooked up with JoAnn Fisher, another competitor in the regatta, for a few hours of great starting practice. We all commented afterwards that it was one of our best Annapolis practice sessions – ever. There was 15-20 knots of breeze and it was a very productive session. Thanks to Greg and Todd Hiller for letting us use their boats and helping us with our practice.

Today was the official practice time from 9 ‘til 4. Another good practice session for us in decidedly different conditions – less than 8 knots and at times well less than 5. Exactly what we needed to get a nice range of practice conditions. After our practice the organizers threw a new twist at us: A Pro-Am fleet race with the Santa Maria Cup competitors and a number of boats from the local fleet with some of the regatta sponsors and local hotshots out. An assessment from one of our astute crew after the races: “It’s never good to win the practice race”. And, no fear, we were never at risk of winning! It was pretty funny being on a start line with 15 boats after concentrating solely on one other boat for so long!

The regatta starts tomorrow morning bright and early and continues through Saturday with a double round robin amongst the ten teams followed by the semi-finals and finals. The competition looks like a great field – with some new faces mixed in amongst the regulars:

Name Country ISAF Ranking (as of 1/31/08)

Philippe, Christelle FRA 4

Barkow, Sally USA 5

Baylis, Liz USA 11

Lovell, Katy USA 17

Mariani, Lorenza ITA 25

Béjar, Caroline Martins de Castro BRA 39

Fisher, Jo Ann USA 54

Le Berre, Anne-Claire FRA 64

Anderson, Derby USA Unranked

Carapiet, Molly USA Unranked

We’re looking forward to some good racing over the next few days. If you would like to follow our progress on the web, the event web site is www.santamariacup.org and they are usually pretty good at posting timely info.

We’re excited that we have a new foul weather gear sponsor starting with this event – Gul USA has provided us with some great new Code Zero smocks this week and will be outfitting our team for the upcoming events with more of their new Code Zero gear. Check out the 2008 line of gear at www.gulusa.com

Thank you for your continued encouragement and support!

Cheers,

Liz, Karina, Suzy, and Pease

The San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team