Archive for December, 2009

Roy E. Disney’s Passing

Today we have lost a hero, a legend, an icon, mentor, and a friend in the sailing world.  With Roy Disney’s passing comes a lot of grief for me personally, but above the grief comes the honor that I feel for having been able to be a part of his life.

In Pyewacket, Roy had a team that became a family.  They stuck together through the years because of their shared love and admiration for one another, as well as their commitment to top-level sailboat racing.

With the Morning Light team, Roy extended that family to the next generation.  We ‘kids’ will always think of him as the ‘grandfather’ of our team, and will forever remember the lessons we learned from him. He not only touched those of us on the Morning Light team, but he shaped our futures and our lives.  We have been influenced and inspired by someone of the highest moral character. We go forward being the best that we can with the most integrity, humility, and humor because that’s what we have seen to be values above all other.

Roy’s influence and inspiration however, was far-reaching. With the movie Morning Light, Roy was able to inspire the whole audience of viewers.  From the sailing community to the rest of the world touched by any Disney creation, we all have a lot to thank for the part Roy played in this world.

After taking a while to deal physically with Roy’s passing, letting the tissue pyramid gradually stop growing, I went out on my deck to throw flowers in the bay in Roy’s honor.  The tide had just switched to outgoing.  As Roy said when the Morning Light team finished exactly at sunrise, calling it ‘Walt Weather’, I think today was ‘Roy Weather’.

Roy may be physically gone, but he will be remembered forever.

Genny

Nominated for US Sailing’s 2009 Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year

I am honored and humbled to have been nominated for US Sailing’s Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year for 2009.  My congratulations go out to all of the nominees, each of whom is a great representative of the sport.  I am proud to have been named part of such a select group of athletes.  It has been a wonderful year for me personally and I would like to thank all of the sailors, coaches and training partners that I’ve worked with throughout the year.  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all of the match racing, fleet racing, and ocean racing that I’ve done this year and can only hope that 2010 is equally eventful!

Happy Holidays to all!
Genny

The Rolex/US SAILING announcement is here.

2nd at Carlos Aguilar Match Race

After an excellent Thanksgiving break off from sailing, I returned to St. Thomas to try to defend our Carlos Aguilar Match Race title from last year.  With a team of Sally Barkow on tactics, Alana O’Reilly on trim, and Amanda Callahan on the bow, we had a great week of sailing on the city front of St. Thomas, enjoying the shifty and puffy conditions and advancing from the round robins in 2nd place to take on the top two French teams in the semi-finals and finals.

The French had been training in the boats in St. Thomas for more than a week, and while we got the best of #6 World Ranked Julie Bossard in the semis in a score of 3-0, we unfortunately couldn’t hold off #1 World Ranked Women’s Match Racer Claire Leroy in the finals, ultimately losing 2-0.  In the first race Claire drew a penalty on us right at the boat at the starting gun, which we would have been happy to hold onto and try to offset later in the race.  But the umpires determined it to be a lead-changing foul, so gave us a red flag which meant we were forced to spin our gybe right away, giving Claire an advantage that she held across the finish.

The second race we had an even start, with Claire winning the right side and us the left side, but unfortunately the leftie that we had been seeing didn’t quite fill in as planned and Claire was able to cross and take the lead.  We split tacks up the beat, ultimately were luffed by her on the starboard layline, and rounded the windward mark just behind.  Although we were close behind Claire’s boat speed and handling were good enough with no mistakes that we weren’t able to catch back up.  The saddest part for us was that we were geared up to race three more races, having not been told by the umpires that the finals were only to be first to two.  As Claire’s team celebrated we put up our redress flag, ready to fight our case.  But the umpires decided against us and Claire Leroy’s team was named the 2009 Carlos Aguilar Champions, with our team winning the silver medal.

As I said in our acceptance speech, the loss makes us that much fired up to win the title back next year.  We’d like to thank Verian Aguilar and Bill Canfield, as well as the many other volunteers for putting on such a wonderful event.  We’d also like to thank Kelly O’Brien Uszenski and her husband Ryan and Peter Holmberg for showing our team the wonderful waters off St. John, and Jane Brown and Andy Smith for allowing us to use their fabulous villa.

With the win at the USWMRC last month and the second place at the Carlos Aguilar Match Race, I have moved up to the top 15 in the Match Racing World Rankings, for the first time in my life, still only counting 6 events to most people’s 8!  I’m very excited to keep going on the upward trend, and from here am looking forward to a full month of training and competing in the Elliot 6s in Miami in January.

Media Coverage:
Video by SailGroove
Event writeups by WorldRegattas