Support the Cascadia Sailing Team - Representing the PNW at the Women’s Invitational This Summer

In Melville's time, sailors insisted that a woman on board brought bad luck. Whalers whispered it. Naval officers enforced it. The sea, they said, was jealous. And yet they called their ships she. They carved female figureheads into their bows. They trusted their lives to vessels described as temperamental, powerful, protective — feminine in both language and lore. “She may be the reason I survive,” Elvis Costello sings in She — and for generations of sailors, that was not poetry but practice. The boat was feminine. The ocean was feminine. But there were no women on board.

In 1887, not long after Moby Dick was published, but before Herman Melville died, and because of the death of her husband, Sophie Helen (Mrs. Charles) Frances Stevens broke the gender barrier at the New York Yacht Club by running the America's Cup defense as owner of Volunteer. A hundred years later, in 1989, Tracy Edwards broke the gender barrier in offshore racing and skippered Maiden around the world in the Whitbread race with an all female crew.  They won 2 legs, never finished a leg worse than third, and placed 2nd overall against 21 other boats of men. Today, half the sailors in the Olympic Games are women, and when Martine Grael takes the wheel of Brazil’s F50 in SailGP, she shows every female junior sailor that women have a place at the very top of our sport.

This September, under the leadership of Clare Harrington, it's first female commodore, the New York Yacht Club will host its first elite championship regatta for the top female sailors in the world: The NYYC Women's Invitational Championship.  The pacific northwest's own Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year, Christina Wolfe, has been invited and has assembled a team.

The event will be held in Newport, RI at NYYC's Harbor Court, possibly the most iconic racing venue in the United States, in 20 identical IC37s owned and maintained by NYYC.  The event is patterned after the NYYC's Invitational Cup, a mixed gender biennial event of Corinthian teams from around the world that has been running since 2009.  Seattle Yacht Club sent teams to compete in 2013 and 2015 placing 7th and 6th respectively.  Royal Vancouver Yacht Club sent teams in 2021, 2023, and 2025 finishing 12th, 9th, and 3rd last year.  Ben Mumford, the skipper of the Royal Vancouver team, has been instrumental in developing our training program and coaching our team.

Christina has attracted a deeply talented team of members of Orcas Island Yacht Club, Seattle Yacht Club, Royal Victoria Yacht Club, Royal Vancouver Yacht Club and Corinthian Yacht Club of Seattle.  The sailors have too many awards and victories to list, and earlier this month, the team's Jib Trimmer, AnaLucia Clarkson skippered her team to a win in another all women's event hosted by San Diego Yacht Club against 24 other invited teams from yacht clubs across the country. 

One look at the team's website and you will agree that this is our team.  OUR TEAM has a lot going for it.  In addition to the deep talent, our team has Westerly, Joy and Stu Dahlgren’s IC37 located here in the Pacific Northwest, to practice in (Joy is our main trimmer).  Our team has elite coaching from Jonathan Mckee, Richard Clarke, and Ron Rosenberg. Our team has tremendous support in Newport, RI from the Otorowski's who are members of both SYC and NYYC and have a beautiful place in Newport, and our team has already raised $55,000 of the $180,000 team budget.

You can join our team today.  Go to the Cascadia Sailing website [https://www.cascadiasailing.org/] and donate right now.  

After you give till it hurts, check out the team and the schedule and if you can think of other ways to help -- do that too.  You might have a coach boat, here or in Newport, you might have a spectator boat that can take other donors out to watch the team sail in local events (the team is sailing in CYC's PSSR April 18-19).  Mostly, the team needs our money, so don't delay donating while you think of these other things.  Giving in more than one way is extra rewarding.

If you have friends that should be jumping onto our team, forward this email, or email me back.  I would be happy to help make the pitch.

The advancement of women in sailboat racing has been steady and inspiring.  From the first all women's event in the ‘88 Olympics to this event our very own team is competing to win.  Let’s all get behind Cascadia Sailing and give them every advantage.  Once we get the money into the bank, our sailors can focus on sailing!