Male-Female Competitive Gap May Be Closing
Two events off Newport Beach recently indicated that the competitive gap between male and female sailors may be closing.
Sue Franta of Balboa Yacht Club, sailing the Olson 30 Mas Rapido, posted a second and then three firsts in winning the Women’s Ocean Racing Series’ 10th annual championship last weekend.
The women sailed nine boats in four races and used spinnakers. They have been doing that for 10 years, but Shannon Aikman, president of the women’s group, said that while they’re racing, the women can still sense the male owners biting their nails, hoping their boats will return intact.
A couple of weeks earlier, Doug Rastello of Newport Beach had won the Prince of Wales Trophy, emblematic of the United States Yacht Racing Union’s national match-racing championship.
Rastello dominated the event, but had to beat a woman, J.J. Isler of San Diego, to qualify for the West Coast slot.
And in one of Rastello’s races, he squeezed his opponent, Joe Tomlinson of the Massachusetts Bay Yacht Club, up past the starting line near the committee boat before the gun. Tomlinson apparently panicked and T-boned the committee boat.
Aikman noted: “If one of us did that, we’d never have another event.”
Women are generally underrated as sailors but, except for lacking strength for certain duties, some skippers welcome them as crew members because, as one once said, “they try so hard.” Isler, the wife of America’s Cup campaigner and world-class match racer Peter Isler, is particularly competitive in keel boats.
Rastello, president of DVM Development in Newport Beach, hadn’t sailed seriously since serving as Rod Davis’ tactician aboard the Newport Harbor Yacht Club’s notoriously slow 12-meter Eagle in the 1986 America’s Cup challenge trials at Fremantle, Australia.
“I was fairly burned out after the America’s Cup,” he said. “I decided to take a work break.”
This time, with a crew of Scott Mason and Skip Beck, Rastello and the fleet sailed Etchells-22s.
“We knew the boats and we knew the water, but we also spent a lot of time practicing,” Rastello said. “We were just flat-out faster than the other guys--the complete opposite of Eagle. It was a good feeling.”
Rastello had a 10-1 record in the seven-boat fleet, clinching his victory after only three days of the five-day series.
He also has placed second and fourth in two Congressional Cups, but it was his first Prince of Wales title after two seconds and a third--and a victory by his younger brother, Mark, last year.
A woman has never won the event, but it may be only a matter of time.
Those interested in joining the Women’s Ocean Racing Series, may call (714) 645-3700.
In Santa Monica Bay, there is the Women’s Sailing Assn., which sponsors a summer series--won by Janet Klose--and a Super Bowl Race Clinic Jan. 28. The WSA may be contacted at (213) 392-6298 or (818) 786-8173.
Rastello’s win notwithstanding, the newest hot sailor on the West Coast might be Larry Klein of the San Diego Yacht Club. Klein won the renewed Ficker Cup match-racing series last weekend to qualify for Long Beach Yacht Club’s Congressional Cup next March.
Klein, who also won the Etchells-22 and the J-24 World Championships this year, defeated four contenders for an invitation to sail in the 1990 Congressional Cup.
Runner-up was Mark Golison of Alamitos Bay Yacht Club, followed by Kimo Worthington of California Yacht Club; Steve Grillon, King Harbor Yacht Club, and J.J. Isler.
Sailing Notes
The World Match Racing Conference and the International Yacht Racing Union have joined forces to ensure order in that growing level of competition. Hal Lane of Long Beach, chairman of the WMRC, said: “Rather than fight ‘em, we decided to join ‘em--and we joined ‘em on our terms.” The WMRC will continue to run its events under IYRU sanction, but the IYRU will administer the skipper rankings and appoint delegates of the WMRC to serve as committee members, with the aim of broadening the base of competing skippers from the current hard-core elite. In exchange, the IYRU will continue to provide judges for the events.
Georgs Kolesnikovs, who with crewman Steve Pettengill this year broke the 135-year-old record for sailing from New York to San Francisco around Cape Horn, is still in the Bay Area living on his catamaran Great American. He’s trying to raise funds to produce a video of the voyage and interest some publisher in a book he’s writing. “In the meantime,” he writes, “I am setting another record--for lasting almost an entire year on nothing but negative cash flow. Fortunately, there were plenty of freeze-dried foods left over from the trip.” Nevertheless, Kolesnikovs concluded, “I remain convinced that I am the most fortunate man on earth.”