25 teams from 5 countries competed in the 22nd Hobie 16 Women’s World Championships in Captiva Island, Florida, November 6-8. My crew Sarah Anne Kraft from Marina Del Rey and I are happy to report that our training and focus paid off.
Our competition included 2012 Olympic silver medalist Nina Curtis from Australia plus 3 other previous Hobie 16 world champions, an Aussie, a Mexican and a Puerto Rican, all very talented and strong female competitors. I’d won in 1991 and 1995 but do the math. That’s a LONG time ago! And I had not been racing Hobie’s for many years until May when Eric and I were in Florida on our cat El Gato and decided to do the Midwinters where I placed 4th in an open fleet. Since the worlds were to be held in Florida, and we would be taking a break from cruising, it felt like a good idea to just go for it. To train I started doing yoga and pilates, and sailed with Sarah in the North Americans in September. She also came down to SDYC and we trained on her boat.
For the Worlds the Hobie Cat Company provids brand new boats and we rotate after each race, sometimes after 2 races, thereby maintaining a fair competition.
Conditions consisted of fairly flat seas with some swells and 5-8 knots with single trapezing upwind and very seldom double trapezing. This put a precedence on good starts, keeping the boat moving, and finding the breeze.
At our first start we won the pin and after trading places with the Italians a few times we found the last shift and won the race. It was a good way to start the regatta and a good check to see where we stood in the fleet. The 2nd race I got too focused on a rival and instead of winning the pin I wasn’t able to get off the line clean and we had to claw our way back up to 8th. The good news was we had speed and picked boats off on every leg. I learned my lesson and from then on only concentrated on us and our own performance.
In the 3rd and final race of the day we finished 3rd, and were sitting pretty in 3rd overall.
The following day the breeze never developed up to the 5 knot minimum and we sat on the beach enjoying the scenery and catching up with old friends while making new ones. The Red Tide was a factor at this regatta and this actually kept most of us out of the water even when it was 85 degrees out and the water was delightfully warm. Captiva Island is on the west coast of Florida and has beautiful white sand beached filled with shells that the shore crew tried to remove to preserve the boat bottoms.
Day 3 the starts were delayed by a few hours but once the breeze freshened we launched off the beach and went to battle. I knew the game plan. Cover the Italians, Caterina Degli Uberti and Giulia Ancilotti, who were in first place overall but with a throwout we would be only 1 point behind them. They were nervous knowing it would be hard to hold onto 1st. Sitting in 2nd place was a young talented team from the USA, Kat Porter and Sarah Isaak, but the word on the beach was they were pretty nervous in their 2nd place position. My nerves were like steel. Nothing to lose, everything to gain. It was time for battle. I couldn’t ignore the Mexican team of Pamela Noriega Negrette and Katia Real Lopez as Pam won the worlds in 2006, and Bella Zanesco with Gundela Kitzmuller from
Australia who won in 2014, but I felt really confident we could beat them if we were able to shift gears and keep the boat moving. Olympian Nina Curtis was another unknown but so far she had not been a threat. My crew Sarah Kraft is relatively new to racing Hobies and this was her first worlds. She is mentally tough and at 26 she’s also very strong and a quick learner. Once I got her to focus almost entirely on her weight placement which needed to be proactive, not reactive, she performed like a rock star. In race 4 we won the pin, squeezed out the Italians, tacked as soon as possible onto port towards a new breeze, and were 2nd at the windward mark. We held onto 2nd following Pamela who led wire to wire. Italy finished 5th. We needed one more race to clinch it and we did. Pam won again, we finished 2nd, tacking and jibing to cover the Italians, but staying close to the lead.
When all was said and done Pamela moved into 2nd, Catarina into 3rd, and we were crowned the new World champions!
There’s nothing quite as sweet as a victory after months and months of preparation.
Thank you SDYC for supporting us in this endeavor! It’s nice to know we had a community behind us as we represented the USA and SDYC!