Before and After: Our Thoughts and Reflections on the Lady Liberty Regatta
Our team skipper, Erica Beck Spencer wrote down her reflections before and after attending the prestigious Lady Liberty Regatta hosted by the Manhattan Yacht Club earlier this month. Read on to learn about the pre-race strategy we employed, the challenges we faced, and the friendships we forged along the way.
Anticipation: Pre-Regatta
Our work at this year's National and North American championships helped prepare us to represent the United States at this year’s Lady Liberty Regatta. We have attended two world championships as a team and love competing at the international level. Combining international prestige with an all-women's event the Lady Liberty makes for an epic experience and may be our favorite event to date. Truly, we are honored to represent the United States.
At this year’s Regatta, many of the teams we’ve admired from afar (and those we’ve cheered on via social media!) came to New York City. We are thrilled to test our skills against them on the water; off the water, we have Google Translate ready to go and can't wait to deepen our relationships with all the teams. This year the competition is gearing up to be greater than ever before with some of the biggest names in women's sailing convening at the Manhattan Yacht Club in Jersey City.
There aren’t too many differences when competing in an international field, but there will be other languages heard on the race course. We love this! There isn’t a team we can overlook as all the representatives are veteran competitors. We will have a better sense of where we stand after the practice race on Thursday, so we need to get out there early to do our homework and study the course. In preparation, we've all been reflecting on our work with coach Mike Ingham: starts, reducing the angle of heel and keeping it steady, and depowering in big breeze so we can keep the boat flat. We are hoping for plenty of wind at this event as we think we thrive in these conditions. Mostly, we will take this event one race at a time, doing the very best we can do. We hope to make Sea Bags, Maine, New England, and the whole of the United States proud.
Reflection: Post-Regatta
We struggled to adapt in our practice run on Thursday. It was humbling to be in the midst of so many talented crews. We kind of felt like beginner sailors who didn't know these boats! It is amazing how different J24s can be from the one we normally race, and these club boats were very different. The strong current at this event played a huge factor in each race, especially in light air, and clearly after the practice race we had a lot to learn. There was a long debrief Thursday evening.
Our debrief was essential as we reflected on applying the work we had done with our coach, Mike Ingham. We knew our teamwork was excellent and we had made dramatic gains with our starting sequence, even without any starting devices we normally use on our personal boat. We started the regatta with two firsts and one second place finish, which was incredible. We tried our best to temper our excitement knowing we had a lot of races in front of us, although there were lots of high fives after each of those finishes. Confident in our boat speed, we just needed to keep in front of our toughest competitors.
It was during the fourth race that adversity struck. Our rudder completely broke after the start of the race. The rudder attaches to the stern of the boat in two places. The pintels on the rudder (female part) insert into gudgeons (male part) that are attached to the hull. The lower gudgeon severed in half, to no fault of our own. Due to the racing instructions, that are unique to this event, we could not qualify for something called "redress" where we ask for average points because of the breakdown. This would normally happen at other events using club boats, but we were stuck with a last place finish. It was very difficult to have something that is totally out of your control happen like that, and the team morale took a hard hit. We did a safety check of all running rigging, lifelines, and shackles when we rotated into every boat, due to this rule, but this fitting was at the waterline and was impossible to catch.
Ultimately, we rallied and turned in two more strong finishes to close out the regatta. At first, it was hard to accept second place, but we came in second behind a team of professional sailors who are racing around the world in The Famous Project and even included an Olympian. Still, we’re proud of the results we achieved in a talented and competitive field, and feel we represented the United States well.
We have really bonded on social media with some of the teams who were competing at this year's Lady Liberty Regatta. In particular, the teams from Korea: Team Ladies' @team_ladies_sailing.kr who have been racing J24s in their country and Monaco @pinkwave_sailing, primarily racing J70s these days. We also connected with our neighbors to the north, team Canada. Michele Cimon, a giant in the J22 class, has become one of those friends we expect to run into at regattas for the rest of our lives.
Overall, we love competing in women's events. The camaraderie is simply wonderful. We are so grateful to the Manhattan Yacht Club for hosting this unique international regatta and for trusting us to be one of their three women's teams to represent the United States. The club had so many volunteers working to make this an exceptional event for all the competitors. We are also so deeply appreciative that these women's teams came from around the world for this three-day event: Australia, Korea, Japan, Monaco, Iceland, France, Sweden, and Canada. We truly hope to see all of them on the water again!
Our training and coaching paid huge dividends for the team at the Lady Liberty Regatta, and we hope this is only the beginning of our strong international results. You can directly support us with the purchase of any product from the Sea Bags Regatta Stripe Race Collection. 20% of the product price funds our training and travel expenses so we can continue competing in meaningful events like the Lady Liberty.