BoatUS.com: Santa Maria Cup

2003 Regatta - May 28-31

Liz Baylis Takes BoatU.S. Santa Maria Cup

Sailing two flights of round-robin races and a semi-finals and finals all in one blustery day, reigning Women’s Match Racing World Champion Liz Baylis and Team San Francisco beat Bermudian Paula Lewin 2-0 to win the 13th annual BoatU.S. Santa Maria Cup women's match racing regatta. The regatta, contested in J/22s, is a Class 1 international match racing event sponsored by BoatU.S. and hosted by Eastport Yacht Club.

Sailing began Wednesday in this regatta, which has drawn top-ranked female sailors from around the world, but bad weather put the tight schedule of one-on-one races well behind. By the end of the round-robin phase of the competition which was made up on Saturday, Californian Baylis had emerged as the clear leader, with Lewin in second, Italy’s Giulia Conti in third, and American Betsy Alison fourth. In the best two-of-three semi-final round, Baylis defeated Alison in straight sets, while Lewin bested Conti in a similarly efficient fashion.

The finals were sailed between Baylis and Lewin, with the victory going to Baylis in two straight races, while the petit finals were contested between Conti and Alison. Alison beat Conti in two races, moving herself up to third overall.

Sailing with Baylis on Team San Francisco were fellow Californians Aimee Hess and Karina Shelton, and Annapolitan Nancy Haberland. Baylis and her crew seemed unstoppable from the start of the regatta, sweeping the first round-robin 9-0 and going on to add six more wins in the second round-robin.
Baylis, from San Rafael, CA, was the 2002 Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year. This year’s Santa Maria Cup drew match-racers from seven different countries, many of them Olympic hopefuls with their sights set on Athens, Greece, next summer.

Title sponsor BoatU.S. provides its 535,000 members with a wide array of consumer services including a group-rate marine insurance program that provides over $7 billion in hull coverage; a fleet of more than 400 towing assistance vessels; discounts on fuel, slips and repairs at over 700 marinas; and a subscription to BoatU.S. Magazine, the most widely read boating publication in the U.S.

For more information, see the event website at www.santamariacup.org.

Final Round:
Baylis def. Lewin, 2-0 (Championship match)
Alison def. Conti, 2-0 (Petit Finals match)

Semi-Final Round:
Baylis def. Alison, 2-0
Lewin def. Conti, 2-0

Double Round-Robin results:

Liz Baylis (ISAF Ranked #8), San Rafael, CA; 15 wins, 3 losses

Paula Lewin (#26), Bermuda, 14 wins, 4 losses

Giulia Conti (#6), Italy; 13 wins, 5 losses

Betsy Alison (#11), Newport, RI; 10 wins, 8 losses

Klaartje Zuiderbaan (#7), The Netherlands; 9 wins, 9 losses

Carol Cronin (#34), Annapolis/RI; 9 wins, 9 losses

Deborah Willits (#17), Texas; 8 wins, 10 losses, 1/2-point penalty

Malin Kallstrom (#26), Sweden; 7 wins, 11 losses, 1/2-point penalty

Marie Faure (#4), France; 5 wins, 13 losses

Arabella Denvir (#33), Ireland; 0 wins, 18 losses

The BoatU.S. Santa Maria Cup and Women's Match Racing:

The BoatU.S. Santa Maria Cup is the premier event in women’s match racing. Now in its 13th year, BoatU.S, has been the named sponsor of the race for the last eight years. The event, which is hosted by the Eastport Yacht Club in Annapolis, draws the top-ranked women sailors from all over the world. In 1999, Dawn Riley – who went on to a much-heralded America’s Cup race in New Zealand – became the first person to win the event twice. In 2000, five-time Rolex Woman of the Year Betsy Alison became the second two-time winner of the BoatU.S. Santa Maria Cup.

But in match racing, the final outcome is never a foregone conclusion, which makes match racing so thrilling for both sailors and spectators. Instead of all boats racing together as a fleet, start to finish, a match race is one-against-one. Each four-person crew races the same kind of boat – a J-22 – so the outcome of the race depends only on sailing ability, strategy and tactics, not technology. Lasting only 20 minutes each, the races are intense, short and cut-throat, and are won or lost by very small margins.

Click Here for pictures from the 2001 Santa Maria Cup

Past Santa Maria Cup Winners

1991: J.J. Isler

1992: Dawn Riley

1993: Julia Trotman

1994: Karen Johnson

1995: Jody Swanson

1996: Melissa Purdy

1997: Betsy Alison

1998: Paula Lewin

1999: Dawn Riley

2000: Betsy Alison

2001: Cory Sertl

2002:Marie Björling

2003:Liz Baylis

Bios of BoatU.S. Santa Maria Cup skippers:

The list of competitors in past and present BoatU.S. Santa Maria Cups reads like a who’s who of world class sailing – Olympians, Whitbread and America’s Cup veterans, and Rolex Yachtswomen of the Year.

Liz Baylis, also from San Francisco, crewed with Dawn Riley last year in both the BoatU.S. Santa Maria Cup and on America True in the America’s Cup. This year she’ll captain her own team for the BoatU.S. Santa Maria Cup. A microbiologist for the California State Health Department, Liz is a veteran sailboat racer. Her experiences include wins in the Pacific Cup, the San Francisco Big Boat Series, and the U.S. Women’s Challenge.

Marie Björling sails from the Gothenburg Royal Yacht Club, and concentrates almost solely on match racing. Currently ranked number 1 in the World, Marie finished 2nd at the Women’s World Match Race Championships in both 2000 and 2001, won the Nordic Championship, the Swedish Championship, and the International Women’s Match Race Criterium in Calpe, Spain in 2001. When not sailing, Marie is a midwife at Neoventa Medical working with ST-analysis of fetal ECG.

Betsy Alison is from Newport, RI. She’s the only five-time Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year, is a three-time U.S. Women’s National Sailing champion, three-time U.S. Women’s single-handed champion, and was selected twice by the U.S. Olympic Committee as the U.S. Amateur Athlete in Sailing. In 1999, she placed second in the ISAF Women’s Match Race World Championship and fifth in the BoatU.S. Santa Maria Cup, which she won in 1997.

Paula Lewin is from Warwick, Bermuda. In 1998, she won the BoatU.S. Santa Maria Cup, the Reed & Barton Cup and the Osprey Cup, and placed 5th in the World Champions. She placed 14th in the Europe Dinghy Competition in the Atlanta Olympics and last year tied for 10th place in the Women’s Match Race World Championship and 7th place in the BoatU.S. Santa Maria Cup.

Cory Sertl is from Rochester, NY. She was Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year, has won the Adams Cup twice, and was a member of the 1998 U.S. Olympic Sailing Team. Last year she finished 4th in the BoatU.S. Santa Maria Cup finals in a match against Dru Slattery.

Dawn Riley is from San Francisco, CA. The winner of last year’s BoatU.S. Santa Maria Cup with a crew that had never before raced together, she also won the event in 1992. The first woman to head an America’s Cup syndicate, America True, she and her team astonished the experts by almost making it to the semi-finals of the event. She was also team captain of America3, The Women’s Team, in the 1995 America’s Cup and pitman for America3, winner of the 1992 America’s Cup.

Santa Maria Cup Website

Click here to read more about the Santa Maria Cup