00:00:00 Venetia Satow: Hi, everyone, thank you so much for coming to the Sag Harbor Women's Sailing Conference. We're really excited to have you all here at Breakwater– thank you so much to Breakwater for hosting this event. We'll get started in just a minute here. But for those of you who don't know me, my name is Venetia Satow, I'm a Laser Radial sailor, and I'm a Sag Harbor local, I started sailing at Breakwater. The idea for this event came when I started to sail places other than Breakwater. I feel like we have a very strong women's group here with the junior sailing program, the women's sailing program, and the Laser/ILCA frostbiting. When I started to step away from Breakwater, I noticed that there were many fewer women sailing around the Long Island Sound, so I just wanted to put this event together to try and inspire some more girls to keep sailing through their junior sailing programs and beyond. 00:01:12 We have three speakers tonight: Dawn Riley, Marbella Marlo, and Anna Tunnicliffe Tobias. We're going to start with Dawn Riley. Dawn grew up in Detroit, Michigan. She sailed collegiately at Michigan State University. As CEO and captain of America True, Dawn was the first woman to manage an America's Cup sailing team. She has raced on four America's Cup and two Whitbread teams, as watch captain and engineer of Maiden in 1989, and as captain of Heineken in 1993. She is now the Executive Director of Oakcliff Sailing. 00:01:57 Dawn Riley: Thank you. So I guess we each have like 20 minutes or an hour, no, I have 15 minutes to speak. And so my goal is to give you a little bit of a background of what I've done, tell you a few sea stories, and then talk to you about Oakcliff Sailing, which is where I'm running right now. I've been living there for 14 years, the longest I've ever lived in one place. So I grew up in Detroit, sailed with my family on a wooden boat. My dad yelled at me. That's how I learned how to sail. There was no such thing as junior sailing or a yacht club in my life. And there was no junior sailing, period, back then. 00:02:37 And we sailed when I was 13 from Detroit, out the barge canal, down to Florida, up to Maine, down to Florida, the Bahamas, the Virgins, Grenada and back. For those of you that are old enough, or maybe it's come back around, that was the year that ‘Jaws’ came out. So everybody in Michigan thought we were going to get eaten by a shark. But we made it, came back, had home school, did really, really well in school that next year. And most importantly, I was obsessed with sailing. And that is what got me into the sport and the business. Now, there were not this many women sailing [gestures to the audience] in the whole Detroit area, to give you an idea. But I didn't quite figure that out. I didn't know that that was a thing– that I was different. 00:03:29 I just knew that I fricking wanted to go sailing. So I would bug people and get on the boats, but then I had to make money. So then I learned how to work on diesel engines, install electronics, make sandwiches, become a sailmaker at all of the sail lofts. And then I needed to pay for college. So I used those skills to pay for college. And then I was going to get a real job because there was no such thing as professional sailing. Well, there were– Tracy Edwards, who you guys know, she was like a hippie who ran away to Antigua. That'd be the days like on this landline. I'm calling the boat owner, I'll get back to you in two months when I come back from Antigua. There were no cell phones. 00:04:15 I'm looking at the kids up here. Cell phones didn't exist. So anyway, so then I was going to get a real job and I didn't. And I got a job running boats in Florida, which is how I put myself through college. And then I got a call, or I got found out about, and I got an interview to go when I was sailing Matador, we were talking about that earlier, to England, from the Virgin Islands to England to try out. I made the team. We went around the world, 1989-90. My grandmother, because again, there was no ESPN. My grandmother sent me a postcard that literally said, “Have a nice cruise, dear” – it gets better – “Don't worry, you can always come back and get married.” [laughs] So that was the time that I was sailing. 00:05:13 And of course, I'm going to show a video, which up here, you're not going to be able to see, and I'm going to have you turn around in a minute. But of course, you've seen the movie. So it was nine months around the world, 12 women, icebergs, frostbite, all of that. Then, after that, I was like, “what am I going to do?” When you're 24 and you've just ended up Second around the world, you're like, “this sailing stuff is easy. I am so good. Ahh, should I do the Olympics? Or should I do the America's Cup? I don't know.” Of course, no woman had ever done a physical role in the America's Cup, so I chose that one. And I got a tryout and made the team. 00:05:53 It was a full-on tryout with football players and, you know, rowers and professional sailors. And I made the team. And then 1992, with Bill Koch, I was the only female on the team. And we won. So I was like, “dang, this sailing's easy.” I did do an Olympic campaign, and I sucked at that. So, we'll just put that out there now. The Yngling was a bad boat. It's not my fault. It's the boat. [laughs] And then there was the call from Punta del Este, Uruguay, as I was putting together the business plan to do the All Women's America's Cup. And they said, “well, there's a boat in Uruguay. There's been a mutiny. There's – um – the boat's fine,” (which was a lie) “and we've got most of a team.” (hmmm) 00:06:45 “Can you find four or five other people to come to Uruguay? And the race starts on Saturday.” So I made a few phone calls and convinced people to get on a plane. So we got four people to get on a plane the next day, which was Monday, to get to Uruguay on Tuesday to practice and start the race on Saturday. That was insanity. So we ended up going around. There's a book. I learned lessons in management under stress. This is the time of hostile takeovers in business, so I had a killer career in motivational speaking after that. Because nothing is more like a hostile takeover than a mutiny on a boat, right? And I had to deal with the aftermath of that. So that was Heineken. And then the 1995 team came back, the all-women's team. 00:07:36 We can talk about that– we're going to have plenty of time for question and answer on that. It was a lesson in the differences between a 1995 team, a 2000 team, which was all guys and one female, and then the 1995 team, which was all women. And then it turned out, one guy, Dave Dellenbaugh, if you remember that. The biggest thing that I talk about with business is the difference was, when we had the debrief, when crap hit the fan, and we have the video debrief, and we're going through on the men's team, they're like, “not my fault, it was his fault. It was his fault. It was his fault.” In the beginning of the women's team, I swear to God, 38 people said, “I think it might have been my fault.” 00:08:25 You guys, this isn't fault. This is just facts. So we can get together and figure out what went wrong and how to fix it moving forward. This is just straightforward. Take the emotion out. There is no crying in sailing. We're moving forward. So that team, we did not win. And then the best team of my life was America True, where when you talk about insanity, I put $50,000, my limit on my visa card, cash advance, sent it to New Zealand as the entry fee for the America's Cup. Don't do that, kids. [laughs] It was not the right thing to do. But for me at that time, it was. And I was able to enter the America's Cup, as a CEO, youngest person and only female still, which is saying something. 00:09:18 We’ve got to work on that! And we went in, we raised $18 million. We eliminated all of the giant killers, including Dennis Conner. There's a whole lot of stories. If you get me out drinking, I'll tell you more stories. But we ended up selling our assets. So, we ended up netting about $13 million was our spend. And Dennis Conner was $45 million and the New York Yacht Club was $67 million. And so we used every single dollar the best as we possibly could because we had a mixed team. We actively spoke: “are we picking this person because or not picking this person because of their gender?” That's all we did. And we ended up with 25% of our team, with every department female, which at that time was like crazy. 00:10:15 And then I went to the French team and became a mercenary. So, how many minutes have I spoken? How many do I have left? We need like one of those timers. And if you can show the video, so everybody kind of just turn your head. You guys, maybe you just want to come down the stairs and I'll just talk. This is just a compilation of the first four campaigns. Yeah, you have… you have some time. There's a little intro. So, the Whitbread Round the World Race, it was a family that owned a brewery and then TGI Fridays and everything else. That's the America's Cup. They've added more layers on the bottom because that was a while ago. That was the start in England with Maiden. 00:11:05 The world was pink because the 1980s were all about pink and big hair. Those are IACC boats, the real America's Cup boats, sailing in San Diego, where you had people pulling on things like that. Spinnakers were 5,000 square feet. It takes about 13 seconds to get them up and down. Heineken going around the world, the sponsor looked like we were going through green beer. Back to the IACC boats in San Diego, there are big waves there. You go a little bit crazy when you're out at sea. Buddy Melges and Bill Koch fighting over the helm, Dave Dellenbaugh coaching, John Kolius – we had some amazing coaches on both teams. 00:11:59 Getting some kelp off of the rudder. 00:12:08 And match racing, of course, is boat on boat. Out in the Southern ocean. That's the end of a boom. The water, yes, is below freezing, but saltwater doesn't freeze at 32°. If you look at the horizon, that's a broach. So tilt your head all that way. That's Dennis Connor – he has a podcast now. It's kind of horrible, but it's out there. 00:12:38 From the top of a mast, an 85 foot mast, through about 30 foot waves. Icebergs. She has a safety harness on. That's Dennis's mast, back then that was a half a million dollars. The French dropped their boat on the travel lift and the keel fell off. And the Australian sank during an America's Cup race in 1995. The next day, the sponsor took advantage and all across Australia were advertisements that said “nothing goes down better than a Foster's,” which was their beer sponsor. That was us in front. The New York Yacht Club painted their boat to look like a mermaid, a little gorilla marketing. And that was not how you hike. That was for a yo-play photo shoot. They were like, “can you cross your ankles?” And for some reason we did. Maiden was 58 feet, aluminum, cold, heavy. Those were high-tech graphics. We went to go see Minnie Mouse. 12 people on the boat and nine different nationalities. There’s Gloria getting help off of the rudder. We gave her dish soap to wash her hair. 00:14:05 Don't put your head on that side of the spinnaker pole. If you still have spinnaker poles. That was Suzy Leech, uh, she got stitches a few times. 00:14:19 And then, that is sailing into Auckland, New Zealand, which is my favorite place to sail, other than Sag Harbor! 00:14:30 So, because this is a women's group, I'm just going to tell you two quick stories and then we'll move to the next person. I think you'll appreciate, um maybe just one. So in 1992, obviously I was the only female, and what people don't know is that in San Diego when you're on the beach it's sunny, when you're out on the ocean it's foggy. The fog goes out and stays over you. So we would come in, and we all lived in corporate apartments and we had hot tubs there, and so we were freezing cold and we go home, go to the hot tubs, we get in there now it's all guys and me and it's Rock Ferrigno, like The Incredible Hulk's nephew, and they're fit people, and pretty soon all of the single women would all of a sudden need a hot tub, and so we were in the hot tub and there was a woman that came in and she was flirting with all the guys. 00:15:30 and they said “well, Dawn sails with us too” and she looked at me and she's like “I sail, you don't sail in the America’s Cup,” and I'm like “Oh yeah, I do the pit.” She goes, “Oh, you make the sandwiches.” So that was all she could conceive of, right? The guys almost drowned in the hot tub because they were laughing so hard. Jump ahead to the women's team in 1995 where we had been ahead at the last top mark all, we had to do was go down to the finish and we would have eliminated Dennis Conner. We came down, we're kind of laying it, we're definitely favored. I'm up on the boom looking, I was like “I see more, I see some wind coming from Point Loma and they're like “No, no, no, we're almost laying the mark. 00:16:20 We’re just, we’re six minutes ahead.” I'm like, “I don't know,” and got talked out of it. I wasn't the tactician, but you know the team talked ourselves out of it. Dennis Conner comes around, jibes we jibed to cover, but he's six minutes behind, and so he gets the puff off of Point Loma. We come back, we finish with him a quarter of a boat length in front. ESPN had gone to baseball; they had you know, faxes were coming in, congratulations because they thought the women had won. And Dennis Conner beat us, so it was a big thing. And I was dating a guy at the New Zealand base, I was outside of the New Zealand base and waiting for him, wearing my America³ gear. And this homeless guy comes up, and he goes, “Are you one of those women?” I was like, “America's Cup sailor? Yep.” 00:17:12 And he goes, “God wanted you to lose.” Okay, I wasn't expecting that, so I'm like, “Okay, why? I'll play. Why?” He goes, “Because God loves you and he hates Dennis Conner, and he knows that the Kiwis are faster and so Dennis is going to lose to the Kiwis and he didn't want you, who he loves, to be the ones that lose the America's Cup.” I was like, “holy crap!” But it shows, in just a few years, how we went from a female who sailed who couldn't conceive of a woman being on an America's Cup boat, unless she was bringing the sandwiches, to a homeless guy who was justifying how that unfair race had been correct, so that, to me, tells progress. I think I'm going to leave it at that story, 00:18:13 So let's; I'll talk about Oakcliff in the question and answer, is that good? Okay, so thank you. 00:18:23 Venetia: Thank you so much for that, Dawn. Next up we have Marbella Marlo; after growing up sailing in California, Marbella sailed on the Harvard Sailing Team as both a skipper and a crew. She helped lead Harvard to two national championships and won an additional U.S. National Championship and world championship outside of college sailing. In addition to earning All-American and All-Ivy titles, she concluded her college sailing career by being named the 2024 Mitchell M. Brindley ICSA Crew of the Year. Last weekend, Marbella won her second Hinman Cup; congratulations! Marbella Marlo: Thank you. I'm first going to preface it by saying I don’t have a presentation, and my sailing career is nothing compared to Dawn’s, but it has been so much of an honor being here and being able to speak, next to Dawn and Anna. I grew up kind of watching them sail and looking up to them. And I just kind of, I guess, technically got out of my junior sailing career. I just graduated college a couple months ago, and today I actually started my first day of my corporate job, so it’s time to move on from my junior sailing, but I get it, I mean it’s so… the divide between boys and girls sailing is very apparent. 00:19:37 It's hard to miss. But for all the little girls out there sailing, just stick with it. I grew up sailing Sabots in Newport Beach, California. I absolutely hated it. I have a diary entry that I still have a photo of where it says, “I hate my parents, they’re keeping me in sailing. Like I just want to do dance and ballet.” And I did dance and ballet until I got to high school. And I just realized the opportunities with sailing are just unparalleled. The community you really meet and the people that you have to look up to. It's not really like any other sport. And I know probably all the adults are telling all the little kids here that, but it's really true. Like I said, I hated sailing when I was little. 00:20:11 I hated being alone in the boat. I can't really complain, sailing in Newport Beach is; it's perfect. It's eight knots every day. It's flat water, but I just really did not like being alone in the boat. I didn't really start liking it until I got to high school. I sailed at my local public high school and I was very lucky. They had a very good team. And my coach, Adrienne Patterson, was one of my biggest role models in high school. She skippered and crewed in high school and in college. She was Female College Sailor of the Year at St. Mary's, and she was a really big role model for me. So I'm really lucky for her. 00:20:41 I wanted a crew in high school. I know a lot of people, for some reason, once you get out of Optis or Sabots, a lot of the girls crew and a lot of the guys skipper. And for whatever reason it is, maybe it’s personality or maybe it's just tradition. I wanted a crew and my coach really told me, “Marbella, you need to be skippering.” And I remember in High School Nationals, when I was a junior, there were only two female drivers. This girl, Maddie, who went on to sail at Dartmouth, a wonderful sailor, and me. And that was kind of the first time I recognized the disparity between men and women and junior sailing. In Newport Beach, for those of you who don't know, it's a big hub for match racing. 00:21:13 So I was lucky to be able to match race. When I was little, I grew up with the GovCup out of Balboa Yacht Club, which is one of the most famous youth match racing events, an international regatta I believe. And I sailed my first GovCup, I believe in 2021. And I was the only girl there. There were 40 sailors there and I was the only girl. And we got third. And I remember when you go up at the beginning of the regatta, Andy Rose, he's the commentator, he's very big in youth match racing, and he introduces all the teams. And it was very bizarre going up there, being the only girl. And yeah, I just, and then a couple of weeks later was the Youth Match Race Worlds, also out of Balboa Yacht Club. 00:21:55 And they raised the quota from having zero female mandate on the boat to having one girl on the boat. So the number of women on the boat was zero. And I remember, I remember, I remember, I remember, I remember the number of female sailors went from one to I think five in the whole regatta. And again, there's 60 sailors there and so few women. And so that was, again, kind of a big surprise for me to see. I mean, growing up sailing in Optis and Sabots, there really is no disparity. Girls and guys are all sailing on the same starting line. But once you get to youth sailing or junior sailing, it really becomes more apparent. So I was lucky enough to skipper in high school. I got recruited to sail at Harvard. 00:22:29 And college sailing, I like to say, is very actually unrepresentative of club sailing. They just recently started women's team racing as a league, I want to say three years ago. So my first year of college sailing was the first year that they had women's team racing. And before that, it was just women sailed their fleet racing, and then the co-ed and the men would all sail their team racing. I mean, that's just kind of how it was, and the college sailing circuit for women is a great opportunity because there is that mandate to have a whole fleet dedicated just for women. And that's a really special time. Like I said, once you get out of college, it's not really like that. It's not that popular of a sport for women. 00:23:04 And so that's a really special way to meet your friends and grow in those relationships. And so I did that for a couple of years. And then I, like I said, I loved crewing. I wanted to crew when I was going into high school sailing, but I was kind of forced into skippering. And so my last senior year, or my senior year of college, I got more into crewing, got more into the co-ed side and that's when I was able to become Crew of the Year and win national championships and whatnot. But yeah, that's kind of my career so far. I wish I had a solution for the disparity. I think it happens right out of Optis and Sabots that, you know, the girls become the crew of the boats and the men become the skippers of the boats. So for all those girls sailing their Optis, continue skippering. I mean, there's so many opportunities. You just have to look for them and you have such a support system. And I would just really encourage you to continue doing that. 00:24:02 Venetia: Thank you so much Marbella. Our final speaker before we pause for a quick break is Anna Tunnicliffe Tobias. She was born in England and moved to Ohio when she was 12. She raced collegiately at Old Dominion and was women's college sailor of the year in 2005. She was a multi-time all-American and collegiate national champion, and after college she went on to her Olympic campaign in Laser Radials. She won a gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and was named World Sailor of the Year, and was a four-time US Sailing Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year. She's also a CrossFit Games Master's Champion. 00:24:57 Anna Tunnicliffe Tobias: Well again, following the ladies before me, just want to say thank you all for coming out and supporting Venetia in this, and supporting women's sailing and helping it grow. My sailing career started a little bit more like Marbella's, and not like Dawn's. I did not love the sport early on. Growing up I grew up in England, my parents I came from a sailing background, a sailing family, both my parents sailed and as I was growing up they had a 40-foot wooden yacht that basically we had to rebuild. 00:25:29 And in the summer times in England we would take the yacht– we'd sail up to Scotland and down The Lochs. So I had to sail but I was never forced into racing. So my parents forced me to learn to sail just in case something happened on the boat with one of them and my brother and I could then you know somehow, in some way, manage the boat until the coast guard arrived or something like that and I was able to sail. So I was I was never forced into the racing side of it. I did what I had to do and obviously I loved the family time but the… I don't know… it's cold in England. It's not really that sunny very often. So like that whole being wet, being cold, and I wasn't very good, so when I did sail like the Optis and I just got beat like it just wasn't fun. 00:26:12 And so it wasn't until I was about 10 or 11, right before I moved to America, I was like, “okay, maybe I could like put a little bit of effort into this, and maybe start enjoying it.” And then when I moved to America, when I was 12, we moved to Toledo or Perrysburg, Ohio, and we sailed out of North Cape Yacht Club, which is just across the Michigan border, on Lake Erie. And it was warm; the water was warm; the wind was nice, and I actually was doing well, so I was like, “actually this is kind of fun.” I enjoyed this sport, and so I did this, I sailed in the summer times. 00:26:49 My high school didn't have a high school sailing team, so my sports in high school were cross-country, swimming, and track, and then I sailed June to August, and then it was back to school again. I did well locally in my sailing, and then I went to Old Dominion University. And I wanted to actually back up a little bit to when I was 12 and I moved to America, the '96 Olympics were on, and I remember watching a medal ceremony, I think it was of a track event. And I saw them putting a gold medal around the athletes neck, and I was like, “that looks really awesome.” Like you could see the passion, the happiness, the excitement in the athlete's eyes. 00:27:28 And I told my parents, I was like, “I'm going to go win a gold medal one day,” and they're like, “Okay, sure.” You know. And it wasn't really ever talked about again, but it was something that I was like in the back of my mind, I was like, “I want to go to the Olympics one day.” And I wasn't really sure if I wanted to go in sailing, or what. Like I love sports, I love competition, and so my senior year in high school, like I got decent at running and I was decent at sailing but I wasn't you know breaking any records, I wasn't winning national championships on the youth circuit and then, so I had like an honest conversation with myself. 00:28:05 In college, do I want to go and run every day or do I want to go sailing every day? And I was like, “Right, probably sailing sounds a little bit more fun than going running every day.” You know, you’ve got to have fun in college, right? And I don't know if you could have fun and run 10 miles the next day. So, sailing it was. So, I found a school that I really wanted to go to; I visited it, it was Old Dominion University and just knew that's where I wanted to go. And I was really fortunate that I got there and had an amazing senior class ahead of me. And I sailed as a freshman under these seniors. I just got my butt kicked every day at practice, but they left after that year and it was awesome. 00:28:46 Then I got to sail almost every weekend and the amount of reps that I got under there basically changed my sailing career. I got the reps in; I started to get better and better and better, started to win national championships in the Laser. Loved the double-handed sailing so I loved sailing with my teammates, sailed both the women's and the co-ed’s. We didn't have a women’s team racing then, we just had the women's and the co-eds. But I was fortunate enough to sail in both divisions as a skipper. Then they changed… so when I was in college, the boat for the Olympics was a boat called the Europe Dinghy. Fantastic boat, just a little on the pricey side to sail and I was in college and I was like, “right, well, I really want to go to the Olympics.” I bought a boat– I bought a Europe Dinghy, used. 00:29:36 I did the trials in 2004 or whenever it was for the 2004 Olympics and I was being honest with myself, like, “can I financially support this?” And I was like, “looks like I'm going to be an accountant.” Because that's what I was studying and really wanted to do. But then they changed the boat to the Laser Radial or the now ILCA 6. And it was like, perfect, because it's a much cheaper boat to sail. It's much easier financially to do. And kind of everything was able to fall into place. Had a really hard campaign. Just competition-wise. 00:30:11 Then, our number one sailor at the time was Paige Railey, who is a multiple-time world champion, youth world champion, had been crushing it in the boat. So she was ranked number one in the world. I was able to bring myself up in the world rankings. And so the two of us were either one, two, or one, three in the world for like the last two years of the 2008 quadrennium. And so our trials were wicked intense. And I think that having such an intense trial system, and an intense trials, kind of set me up for success at the Olympics. There was so much pressure and so much stress during that trials that whoever was going to win that trials was for sure going to be one of the favorites for winning a medal in China. 00:30:57 And so fortunately, I was able to sell a slightly better event. I won by a point or two. And so was able to come out on top of that. And then that set me up for, I think mentally, for a really successful Olympics. And the Olympics in China was a great event. It was super light for most of it, at least definitely light winds for all of our training. We had… I think we sailed all 12 races. Most of the races were in a breeze that was about that six to eight range, six to nine range. This big swell, not much wind. We had one race one day that was about… mmm… 18 to 25 knots, an incredible downpour that you couldn't see the windward mark. 00:31:44 And I was telling Venetia this story this weekend, but they started us anyway. And I was like, “well, I don't really know where I'm going. I don't know what the wind's doing.” So we started and the watches that we use, they count down and then they start counting up. So I was like, “I'm just going to sail for seven minutes and I'm going to tack and sail for seven minutes and hope that I'm somewhere near the windward mark.” And randomly, luckily came out somewhere near the windward mark, found a boat with a flashing light. And I was like, “maybe that's where we're going.” Found this mark, still had no idea know what place I was in, in the race. 00:32:17 And then on the downwind leg, or maybe on the second upwind leg, it like started to lighten up a little bit and you could kind of see like, “oh, I'm doing all right in this race. This is great.” So anyway, and then we had three more races leading into the medal race. The medal race at the Olympics is, or the medal races in general in Olympic sailing, is a double point score. So in first place, you get two points, second place gets four points, et cetera, up to 10. It's just the top 10 boats. So going into the race, basically whatever lead you have, your points are basically cut in half, right? So I had a, I managed to accumulate a lead… 00:32:56 So I was in the gold medal position going into the medal race. Second place was seven points behind me. And it was Gintarė Scheidt from Lithuania. And then in third place was Xu Lijia from China. And then there was an Australian in fourth. And she was far enough back in the points that I couldn't lose a medal, which was awesome. So I was locked into some sort of medal at the Olympics. So then the medal race, we go out, we start, I have a discussion with my coaches: where we want to go on the race course. We have it all figured out. We get to the start line. We start setting up and I'm two boats down from the committee boat and three, two, one, go. We set off. 00:33:38 And then the individual recall flag goes up and I'm like, “mmm…” and he's talking in English because I think he was from England. And, I like, but I couldn't understand what he was saying. And I was like, “man, I think he said USA.” And I was like, that would be bad. Because if I got an OCS, right, I would lose the gold medal. I'd be guaranteed this, the bronze, but I would lose the gold. So I went back and I restarted, sailed up the first beat, got to the top mark in eighth place, went downwind, lost a boat, was now in ninth place. And the Gintarė and Xu Lijia were in, I want to say like, third and fourth in the race. 00:34:14 So I was currently still in the bronze medal position around the leeward mark. I'm like, right, “well, the right side didn't work last time. So I'm not going to go there.” So I start working on the left side. And then some of this went a little more in my favor than I thought it was going to, but I saw a little bit of pressure out on the left side. So I'm like, “right, I'm going to go get that.” Because I have nothing to lose. And it was a little bit of pressure, but it was also like, I don't know, a 40-degree left shift, which was awesome because now I went from ninth place and I was in third place at the top mark. And was able to cross the line in second place and claim the gold medal for the U.S., it was just the first, I want to say the first gold medal for women's sailing in 20 years to that point. 00:34:43 Thank you. And it was an amazing experience, amazing feeling: happiness, excitement, relief that it had happened. All that hard work and it felt really cool to bring it home for not just myself, but for everybody that supported me: my team behind me, my parents, my coaches, even bringing it home for like the U.S. Laser squad, right? Like as a team, we didn't train together, but we pushed each other so hard that like it was to bring it home for all of us in the U.S. And so it was a really cool experience. I tried to do it again in London, had an amazing team. I switched to match racing because it was a new discipline in the Olympics. I kind of wanted to follow in Dawn's footsteps and do America's Cup racing. 00:35:50 So I was like, “right, well, I've done the Laser,” and the boats were starting to get slowly more and more high-performance. I was like, “right, well, I need to learn how to match race and I need to learn how to do high-performance sailing.” And so this was a perfect opportunity to get into match racing and do it on the Olympic scene. So I got into match racing, loved it. We rose up the ranks. Again, we had an amazing American squad. I think we had three teams ranked in the top five or six at one point in the world rankings. The trials again were intense. We were able to come out on top. Unfortunately, we got eliminated in the quarterfinals and we were the gold medal favorites going into it but got eliminated in the quarterfinals. 00:36:31 So ended up finishing fifth. And it was a bit gut-wrenching. I felt like I'd let my teammates down. I let my country down, my whole squad down. And it was, it was really hard to take. And still to this day, like I'm trying to fight back tears right now. But it was, it was really hard to take that loss because we had put so much time and effort into it. But that's sports, right? At the end of the day, people win, people lose. And it's, it's no fun being on the losing end of sports. And so we were super bummed that we couldn't do our job and bring home a medal for the USA at that event. 00:37:10 Because I took that loss really hard, I kind of lost a little bit of the fire that I knew it would take to go after the Olympics again. And so I retired from Olympic sailing for four years and got into CrossFit, which I was able to have a bunch of success in, I had a great coach. My husband, Brad, led me all the way towards the top and then the top of the Masters, which was great. Such a fun sport. And don't worry, you don't have to do CrossFit at that extreme. CrossFit is originally designed for everybody to do, to be functionally fit. So if you want to check it out, happy to talk about it. But you don't have to take it to that extreme. It's just about being fit and functioning in everyday life. 00:37:53 And then I kind of got the urge to go back to sailing. So I got I hopped back in for the last two trials in the 49er FX. I partnered up with Paris Henken, whose brother just won the latest medal at the Olympics, the bronze medal in the 49er. And so paired up with her, and so paired up with her, came just shy on our two Olympic trials, but gave it our best effort. And again, that's sports. So now switched, my sailing hat out and put my coaching hat back on and getting into sailing and, uh, coaching, sorry. And I've been working with Venetia a little bit in her ILCA 6 sailing and some other sailors around the country and world. So I’m looking forward to continuing to push women into the sport and, and lead them and try and set examples. Nothing would make me happier than seeing any youth sailor, but particularly female youth sailors, following their dreams, whatever they would be: around the world racing, America's Cup, Olympics, or just having fun on Tuesday nights. You know, whatever it is, it would make me really happy to see females and youth sailors following their dreams like that. 00:39:10 Venetia: Thank you, Anna. We're going to pause for a quick break and some food, and if anyone has any questions for the speakers, there are a couple of piles of flashcards around the room over there, on the bar. If you'd like to write down your questions, I'll get to those after the break. Thank you. 00:40:00 Hello everyone! So we're going to come back with a few questions for individual speakers, and then I have all of your questions that you wrote down on flashcards and a few questions for all of the speakers together. So I think we'll start with Dawn again if that's okay. 00:40:37 So the first one's about Maiden, the 1989 campaign. What was it like to be followed so closely by the press on Maiden and what impact did it have on the race? Dawn: Okay, so when we were doing the race, we just did it because we wanted to go and sail and not be a cook, which was pretty much the only way you could do it before. I keep talking about women having to make the sandwiches and stuff, the ironic part is I'm really good at sandwich making. But the media, we didn't… I think most of you've seen the film when Jenny's talking about the media in the beginning; it was there and we're just like “whatever, we're just women, we're just people that want to go sail around the world” and we believed we could do it, and the rest of the people thought we couldn't but it was extremely frustrating to be asked questions about your makeup and your skin care and all of that. 00:41:29 Now my degree is in advertising and journalism so I knew that the fact that we were taking sailing into Red Book and Conde Nast, and all of the women's, was a marketing coup. But as athletes, we wanted to be in the sports section. Venetia: Thank you. And in your book, you spoke about finding a group of girls to sail with for the first time and living in The Pink House. Can you tell us what it was like to do this after sailing with mostly men before? Dawn: The Pink House… has anybody been to Hamble? Anna probably has. It’s at the end of the street, and you can see the king and queen from the top floor where Sally Creaser and I had our bedroom. So living in the Pink House, it was just the house where all of the Whitbread crews wanted to be, and Tracy Edwards got it for us. 00:42:20 And it was… the thing I think was probably most impactful is that there were a bunch of people we went sailing, and Sally was from England, I mean Scotland, and she's six foot tall, and Jenny was you know posh and brilliant and did her thesis on this strange concept of putting GPS's in cars for navigation, you know. But when we came back for the film, all of the women… we were all ourselves just a little more amplified. Like if we went right back to being 18, 19, or 20, but we're a lot louder. So it was a pretty good group of people, uh. Venetia: And after you joined the U.S. Women's Challenge boat, can you tell us about putting the crew back together after they'd mutinied… what was the moment where everything started to work again? 00:43:13 Dawn: Okay so the U.S. Women's Challenge was the team that made it to Uruguay and had the mutiny. And then I came in, Peter Blake was a good friend of mine, and he emailed me and said, “you need to do what you do in Corporate America, as you fire everybody and hire them back.” And I was like, “Yes, but.” If you ever hear yourself saying “yes, but,” stop. Listen, I should have done that. As I cobbled together what I could have...I should have made one decision with Jeni Mundy as the navigator. Instead, I kept the navigator from the previous race. There was a whole bunch of stuff that went on. But four days into the race my friend Renée woke me up and she's like, “they're doing it again, they're doing it again.” So we had an all-hands come to Jesus meeting in the middle of the Southern Ocean at 3:45 in the morning and I was like, “this is bullshit and this is not going to happen.” I had to lay down the law then. 00:44:10 I will say that that team was not the same team as Maiden; if we all got back together there's some people that are dear friends but it wasn't.. because we didn't have the time to form the team and… was it Poppy? One of the girls asked me what my favorite part about the America's Cup was, and I was like, “it's about being that team.” And when you get knocked down by an ex-NFL football grinder just for fun, it’s like “yeah! I’m part of the team!” And just having that, you know, that mentality, is what I miss. So Heineken, we didn't get to that, although when we weren't losing our rudder, we were third. 00:44:53 Venetia: Can you tell us a little bit more about your America's Cup campaigns and what it was like to go up against sailors who had been so successful previously? Dawn: Hmm, you know what? Again, when you're in the middle of an America's Cup team, it's like… the 1992 team, like you guys have heard of Kenny Read. He didn't make the team. You know? Buddy Melges was a mentor of mine, Gary Jobson was there and he got the flick. So we were just different, you know, we were just there we were sailing. It was… it was pretty intense, it's complicated. I talk about Oakcliff which we hopefully will talk about before the end, but Oakcliff is like the America’s Cup campaign that never ends. And somebody asked me if I was going to Barcelona, I've been… 00:45:42 I was in Barcelona about three weeks ago, and I saw all my friends because we trained a bunch of the people that are on American Magic, and the French team, Orient Express, was the guys that I was the GM for before. And during the America's Cup, the actual racing, there's no time. It is full-on, head down, 24/7. On the first America's Cup, we averaged 1.7 days off, a month, for over a year, to give you an idea. Venetia: Thank you, and yeah, we would love to hear more about the Oakcliff Olympic Helix and how it's being put together. Dawn: I think maybe… I think Anna and I are probably going to have conversations about this… so briefly, Oakcliff is building American leaders through sailing. We're in Oyster Bay, New York. 00:46:31 We have over a hundred boats, hopefully it's going to be 99 because I'm hoping to sell the biggest boat we have which is OC86, a maxi boat, which is insane to put people on and go sailing when they're all mostly under 25 and I'm the only old person and I'd never get to sleep. We have uh, we're racing Courageous with a diverse team. Now, unfortunately, they found a wooden boat that was not giving them… cut them off… tried to shut the door… so that wasn't good yesterday and then we have the match racing, so we have the world match racing tour. We have 12 Match 40s. We have 12 to 18 graded match racing events a year. We have Shields, we have Lasers, Sunfish, 470s. Hunt called me, we have 22 470s. 00:47:17 We have about 20 49ers, FXs, then the Lasers, and then the Wasps, those are fun. Oh, and if anybody wants a Flying Phantom or a Nacra 20, we have them. But our mission is to take all of those boats and provide the opportunities… kind of like my lifespan on steroids, so, and I've already talked to quite a few parents here where their kids came and sailed with us to go learn offshore and learn how to fix the engine and the sails and be able to be a leader and to navigate. How to come in and do match racing and that one you learn how to fix the boats because the boats run into each other, so composites are part of it. And we've got a really good handle on the match racing, the apprenticeship program, The Winter Sapling which is strictly apprenticeship, not so much sailing, and the offshore. 00:48:10 The part that we don't have sorted is how to fix the Olympics, so that's where… can I just pass the question over to Anna? Can you just give us a little bit about what you think we need to do so we can regain the success? Were you the last one to win a gold medal in America? Anna: Yes. Now I’m on. You know, I think we… we have a lot of great sailors in this country. We definitely have the talent. We need to continue pushing that talent as a squad and keep pushing each other to make it towards the top. And we saw the 49ers do a great example of this in the last Olympics and came away with a bronze medal, which is so amazing. Super happy for them. And, yeah the two boys were out there winning it, 00:49:05 but it was definitely a squad effort that got them there and I think they would say that as well, and so I think they're a great example of what we need to keep doing and pushing towards to keep building the U.S. Olympic squad back up to where we were. Venetia: On that theme of getting more people involved: wow can people get involved at Oakcliff? Dawn: Oh, this is me? You gotta ask other people questions. Basically, our t-shirt said… we did a focus group – back to my advertising – and somebody accused us of lying and we're like “what do you want? We’re like totally genuine.” And they said, “well, I guess what I'm saying is: it's too good to be true.” So we made t-shirts that say “Too Good To Be True” with “Oakcliff” on the back. 00:49:49 All you have to do is apply and show up, and then you get to go sailing. There are programs all summer long. If someone came up to us and said, “I think we need to have purple boats that will sail counterclockwise around this buoy,” and we're like, “okay! Let's see if it works.” We did double-handed offshore, which might be back in the Olympics with Melges 24s. We sent them from Oyster Bay, around Stonington and back. 120 miles. And everybody thought we were crazy, but we said no, we can fix this. We built our own sail loft; we built our own mainsails with reefs. We put in reefing systems, we put roller furling jibs. 00:50:32 We got Harry Melges to send us Melges 20 spinnakers, so you could take them up and down with two people. We had safety harnesses on. The best part is we had a roll bar with electronics and AIS and live streaming switching between two different cell phone carriers. And the rule was, when you're on deck, you had to be clipped in. And how did we monitor that? Because myself and another person took watch at my desk, watching the TV to make sure they were clipped on. And if they weren't, they were going to get a phone call and say “go home, you're out.” So like the kind of stuff that you can do if you just put all of your, you know, mentality to it, it's amazing. 00:51:17 So I would love for anybody to go to OakcliffSailing.org, look at the programs, email, sign up for the newsletters, that's the biggest one for us. So, we can send out messaging, but just, we need the people who are passionate and curious. You don't have to be an excellent sailor, you don't have to be wealthy, you don't have to be super fit, but we will make you go to the gym... you just have to show up. Venetia: Thank you, Dawn... I think we'll move to Marbella next, if that's okay. Could you talk us through how college recruitment went for you? Marbella: Yes, so the infamous question of college recruiting. It is, arguably, a large reason why a lot of parents put their kids into sailing, for better or worse... 00:52:07 And it's a little bit esoteric, so… I guess I don't know if they changed the rules. But I know a lot of people don't start talking to college coaches until, let's say, their junior year of high school. Until then all you can really do is get as much sailing in as possible. I said “yes” to every single thing when I was going through junior sailing. My parents don’t know anything about sailing; they just kind of threw me into the program. So I don't really have any parents buying me boats or anything. And you don't really need to own any boats or have any private lessons. I never had that growing up either; it was just saying yes to every single opportunity, and I have to say, I was lucky. 00:52:43 Living in California, there are so many year-round opportunities; you don't need to really own anything. But just saying yes to everything is possible and being nice to your coaches when you're in junior sailing because; chances are, they know the college coaches. It's a very small sport. And that's really in your power. And then once you get to, you know, junior year, I want to say maybe, summer going into junior year, emailing the coaches. I mean, everybody knows each other. Everybody talks. So, you know, don't lie to any coaches and just be honest. You know, it's a very typical college recruiting process. 00:53:16 You give your grades, you give your results, and they probably have been following your results since it is such a very small sport. You can kind of tell the top sailors and be able to track what regattas they're doing. But yeah, it's not a secret. You kind of just have to do the best you can. And then once you get to the certain point, talk to the coaches and, you know, ask your coaches for advice if they know them, if they can give a good word. But yeah, I wouldn't say it's anything secret. It's just kind of doing the best you can and everything that's in your control. Dawn: Can I just ask, are you smart too? I'm pretty sure that has something to do with getting into Harvard. 00:53:51 So don't not go to school just to go sailing. Marbella: Yes, you do have to also do school. Yeah. But I went to public school, you don't need to go to fancy private school. Yeah, it's not… it's not a code you need to crack. It's very, very self-explanatory. 00:54:13 Venetia: And so you started as a women's skipper and decided that you like to crew better. What was the reason for that and what was the transition like? Marbella: Like I said, when I entered high school sailing, I really wanted to be a crew. I did ballet, that was kind of my main sport growing up. Sport, art form. When I was a little baby girl to kind of high school. So I was very flexible, very athletic, and as a crew, that that skill is very important for just being able to maneuver throughout the boat, and so I wanted to crew going into high school but I knew how to skipper and I was decent at it and so I was kind of forced into skippering throughout high school. 00:54:54 So when I got to college, I said I want to be a crew, but again I was recruited there to skipper and Harvard can only recruit one girl a year, so I was told to skipper for two years and then by the end of my senior year, we had another we had three girls on the team, enough to make a women's team race, so that I didn't have to be the third women's skipper for the team race. And so it was a hard conversation having with my coach. The summer going into senior year, I said, “Look, I've been wanting to crew; I have been crewing; I've started at nationals for the past two years, and I want to just dedicate this entire year to crewing.” And it was a difficult conversation, they'd been wanting me to skipper, but I, I kind of asserted myself, and I'm very happy I did it. 00:55:36 I do enjoy crewing a little bit more. Skippering is always very fun to do, but that was kind of just a personal choice that I wanted to do. Venetia: And as a crew, obviously you say skippers like to hear different things from you throughout the races. How do you make your voice heard if they're not interested? Marbella: That's a funny question. It's a combination of again like I said, not taking really personal. This past Nationals, which Harvard won the National Championship but it was a very, it was a very emotional regatta. We had our ups and downs through it, and you know it's important to voice yourself, but if that comes at a certain cost of, you know, making the team happy... 00:56:21 like it's a very it's a fine balance between obviously keeping team morale up and then saying things if you believe. There's a puff over there, and you know there are arguments, so I think just keeping reminding yourself that you know you're all trying to win a regatta you're not trying to you know be mean to other people or take things the wrong way. But yeah, there are definitely times when the fights in the boat can kind of result in not good results. But communication and just, again, brushing everything off is I think the two big things into keeping that dynamic very healthy. Venetia: And you just competed with a number of your teammates from Harvard in the Hinman Trophy. What was the training like leading up to that? 00:57:06 Marbella: So, yes, we sailed the U.S. Team Race Nationals last weekend in Annapolis, which is I guess arguably the biggest team race dinghy national championship. And we won that, which was very fun that's always a very fun regatta to do and so there's the team racing for those of you don't know, it's three boats of two people on a boat, so there's six people total and four out of the six of us were from Harvard, who had just won the… or we didn't win the team race nationals for college, we tied we lost the tiebreaker by half a point… so we almost won but we had a lot of team chemistry with that and then the two other people on the team are from BC and we all we did the Hinman last year and we won it last year, so I think… 00:57:52 And something that we keep repeating is just the chemistry between our team is just kind of unparalleled between the other teams that we were competing against, between sailing with each other in college and the two other sailors from BC they'd sailed Optis and raced in Team Race Nationals and Worlds in Optis with the with the other skippers and so we all growing up sailing with each other. If you're little it'd be nice to everybody that you sail against, I cannot stress that enough, you're going to be sailing with each other forever and it's those friendships and relationships that are kind of… you can't, you can't beat that. And when you have just like the perfect chemistry with your team… your limits are endless. 00:58:29 Venetia: And now that you've graduated, what's next for you in sailing? Marbella: Yes, so, I just moved to New York City a couple months ago, just joined the New York Yacht Club, and I'm looking forward to sailing. I'm not sure; I haven't really sailed in Manhattan exactly, but um… Dawn: Oakcliff Marbella: Oakcliff, yes! I have sailed at Oakcliff a couple years ago. But I have a couple regattas lined up, I'm lucky there's a lot of sailors in New York, so I just did it or Hinman last weekend; I'm doing my third World Youth World match race regatta in November, which is in Saudi Arabia, which is kind of crazy, I didn't even know there was sailing in Saudi Arabia. And then doing some stuff with my home yacht club, and yeah, so I mean you only get as many vacation days as your job allows you to, but I'm using them all right now to sail, and probably we will be doing that for the next couple years. 00:59:28 Venetia: Sounds good, thank you. And I think we'll move to Anna for the last few questions. Can you talk about fitness in relation to sailing and where junior sailors should start in their fitness training. Anna: Absolutely. I'm obviously obsessed with fitness. No, so in sailing there's so many things that out of our control right like we go on the water, we pretend we can see the wind, and where it's going to come from, and what it's going to do, and we talk a good talk of like… “yeah, totally going to be a lefty here,” but there's so many things that are really out of our control, right? But there's one thing for sure that is absolutely within our control and that 01:00:06 is our own health and fitness and nutrition and so i'm so passionate about like making sure that we take control of one bit of our sport that we can actually do and know that we're doing the absolute best for it. Because I would hate to get out on a race course at the biggest event of your life, and just be tired. Like that? There's no excuse for that in my mind. So, to me, taking fitness and working towards it takes one component out of the mystery of what's going to happen on the race course because you know that's set and that's that's solid and that's going to carry you through physically. 01:00:44 Additionally, physical fitness allows for mental fitness because if you're not getting physically tired your mental game stays on point and then you can focus on reading this wind better than your competitors, and then in playing in that comes the nutrition right so we have to have really good nutrition to make sure that we're staying alert so that we can focus on all of that. So, I'm a big proponent for kids getting into fitness at a super early age. Yes, going out sailing and hiking is a lot of fun, and you're actually being really active if you're doing that, that's way better than sitting in front of a TV screen and playing video games. Does it have to be a specific type of fitness? 01:01:24 No. Right, like at a young age, just do sports: get outside, and do a new sport. Like that really is important, like I said. I grew up doing swimming and running, and those are my big things. To be fair, training through the 2008 Olympics, I was training for a Half Iron Man… like I had a half Iron Man two months after the Olympics. Like I don't know, I thought that would be a fun thing to do, and, you know, and I did some weight training in there too, obviously. But the most more you get dedicated into your sport, yes, then more you kind of have to dial the sports-specific training into 01:01:57 it. But I think at a very early age, just doing sports, getting out and doing something active is really important Building, building muscles, building muscle memory, balance, and then from there as you go, start picking up programs that are going to maybe specifically work towards hiking or trapezing or whatever your specific skill is that you want to do in the boat there are programs out there… little shameless plug, I do do programming for fitness, so if it is something that like you are looking for, like, there are those programs that will help you direct you specifically for that sport, but I think it's over time. I'm not one 01:02:34 to say like, you need to, like, you're going to sail for the rest of your life because things change, life changes, right, like, and sailing is definitely a sport that you have to have passion about, you can't go out there and not enjoy what you're doing, you have to love it. And so I don't think it's super important to like get burnout and like overdo it at an early age so that we don't enjoy it later on in life, let it evolve as it goes but get involved in the fitness. Venetia: And how do you think CrossFit impacted my sailing? And once you came out of retirement. Anna: I think it was awesome like I was definitely way more fit, able to do so much more. 01:03:16 I'm 41 and was able to kind of hang, I think, with like the 28-year-olds, the 23-year-olds. I was definitely like the grandma in the fleet in these last two campaigns that I've done. But being able to like be able to hang with them and have that just solid background knowing that I could trust my muscles to do what I needed them to do throughout a race, regardless of how many we were doing a day and how long the races were and how windy it was. Venetia: And then kind of a switch to sailing. What was the switch like from sailing single-handed in the 2008 Olympics to sailing with two crew for 2012? Anna: I was fortunate; I had amazing teammates - Molly and Debbie were fantastic. 01:04:02 We just kind of all clicked. I went to school with Debbie, so we'd known each other for a long time, and I was able to do it for a long time. Molly went to school in Hawaii, and we overlapped a couple years, and we've kind of all just been sailing a little bit whilst I was doing my laser campaign, we dabbled in some match racing as a team together, and then when they switched it to match racing we we all partnered up and teamed up and it was just great dynamics. We all had a really honest understanding, like Marbella said, communication, like we were just straight up honest with each other all the time, and you know then there was no hard feelings ever. I was just super fortunate that I had amazing teammates to sail with. 01:04:44 Venetia: And after your break after the 2012 Olympics, what made you decide to come out of retirement and sail the 49er FX? Anna: So I came out of retirement. Well yeah, I came back in 2017 I want to say and decided I want to try sailing again see if I wanted to do a campaign see if the fire was there. So I decided I was going to go back into the Laser Radial actually and did some training did some prep signed up for the World Cup event I got told the day of the event that I could not sail because I had not been in the drug testing system for six months after retiring. 01:05:21 So, just to be clear I did not fail a drug test, which was a rumor that was going around. I did not fail a drug test, I just had not been in the drug testing system for the six months, which is a requirement before you could compete after coming out of retirement, so I had to wait for six months before I could compete officially on the international stage and I was like, “whatever, like it's just not meant to be.” So I kind of went back to coaching. And then I got a 01:05:45 couple phone calls, “Hey, we need some crews, we think you'd be you'd be good at it.” So they were like, “Do you want a crew in a 470 or do you want crew in a 49er?” and I was like, “If I'm gonna come back, I want to crew and to crew I want it to be super physical and fast and fun.” And I know the 470s are kind of fast, but there's a lot of boat work, and keep in mind I came from Laser sailing which has like five lines on it and doesn't really ever require boat work, and match racing where somebody does all the boat work for you. 01:06:16 So I'm not big into boat work, so when I thought the 470 was an option, I was like, “I don't know.” And that whole cramped in the front of the boat thing in the light winds didn't really appeal to me either, so I was like, “right, let me give the 49er a try.” Teamed up, hopped on a boat with Paris Henken and she's a phenomenal skipper, and she just made life super easy and for me, like covered my butt for sure… thinking I was like really good, but no she was just saving all of my flaws and screw-ups and we just gelled and so I was like “right, well, let's give this a go because she's really good and I'm having fun and it's hard work which is what I want out of it,” so yeah that's how we gave it a go. Venetia: And now, after the 2024 campaign, what will your involvement with sailing be? 01:07:06 Anna: So I'm getting back into the coaching side of it. Absolutely love coaching sailors like you who are incredibly passionate about the sport. I was just telling somebody before that there's nothing that makes a coach happier than somebody that sits there and asks questions and writes down notes and is constantly just looking to learn, and that makes like a coach like so happy and it makes a coach's job super enjoyable. So I'm just super, I'm really looking forward to working with sailors and athletes that do want to keep learning, and pushing themselves to see where they can take themselves. And then also working on the fitness side, like I said in the beginning, I'm really passionate about fitness, and so how can I keep building, and helping sailors build their fitness towards, to help them in their sailing and where they want to go with their own sailing. 01:07:59 Whether it be Olympic level or just you know evening races at the local yacht club, so whatever it is, like I want to help people do that as well. Venetia: Thank you, Anna, and now we have a few questions from everyone watching. To all of you: What are your strategies for mental resiliency after a bad race or a bad regatta? Dawn: I'll go first. Match racing is amazing for that because you have no time to be upset because you got another match coming straight up. And when we did lose the America's Cup to Dennis Conner in that race Katie Pettibone was just shattered and I didn't know that 01:08:44 this impacted her and she was crying and everything I said, “it's a sailboat race. We've got more in our life going to happen. We're going to do more races.” So just keeping that in mind. Marbella: Yeah I would say, building off of that, my teammates and I, whenever we had a bad race, would just say “we're playing with boats, it's really not that.” You know that… having, I think, perspective is the easiest way to just take a step back from anything any challenge in life and especially when it's a race just, you know, knowing that you're there, you know, to have fun. I know it is very competitive, but it's not, you know, at the end of the day, you have another race… or it's not the end of the world, you have another race right after that. Anna: So yeah, that's like what we want to do. 01:09:27 They're realistic reviewers, right? Like, we never really just let it go, so we always have a rule: we get five minutes to sulk about it and then from there, then you have to just start talking facts. Like, “okay, this is where we made a mistake and this is what it is. What did we do well, okay, we did that well, good.” That ends the conversation on a positive note, “let's go focus on the next race,” but that five minutes to sulk is key. Venetia: And as for a more specific question about the physicality of sailing, what are three basic strength exercises that you would recommend for sailing? Anna: Buy my program! No. I think more than anything, like yes I can go and I can list off a bunch of exercises, but the one thing that we really all need to focus on and not just in sailing but just in life, is strengthening our core. 01:10:19 Every movement that we do should start with an engagement of the core and then it extends out to our extremities so if you're going to reach for something, you should engage the core and reach for it; if you're going to squat or sit down in a chair, you should engage your core and then sit down. So, more than anything I highly recommend working on core strength remember core is not just doing crunches, right? Our core extends all the way around our body, so it does involve strengthening our backs and our abdominals and our obliques, so really focusing on that and that makes a massive change in all of our fitness, for everything else that we do. 01:10:55 Venetia: Thank you. And this one's maybe more for Dawn, what do you think about the recent changes in the America's Cup boats? Anna: You’re supposed to be politically correct. Dawn: I don't think I've ever been… Anna said “be politically correct.” I don't think I am ever. There's something dramatic about seeing humans wet and struggling and failing and overcoming that you do not see in these boats. You also did not see it in the catamarans– the biggest, most expensive fail with Russell Coutts was when he had the cheaper boats in San Francisco that were smaller, the 50s, and then they had… what were they? The 75s, they were the full expensive boats but when you zoom in, you couldn’t… I couldn't tell which boat i was looking at! So stop with all of the gimmicks. With that being said, SailGP is very close to commercially viable and that's what he was going for. So the the current boats, I've been watching and trying not to be too public… they're amazing feats of technology. 01:12:06 But I know quite a few sailors that were amazing trimmers that just pulled back because they're like, “I come up with something, this brilliant idea, and I want to develop it and they go, “Oh, we're going to give it to the computer to develop,” and they're out. Venetia: And then kind of one for all of you: what steps would you recommend to decrease gender bias in sailing? That’s major. Dawn: Okay, I've got this one, but you guys can go in, too. First of all, just freaking do it. The second one is, once we have women in decision-making just like in corporate America, just like on super yachts, just like on sailing teams, is if you have women in leadership and decision-making powers, it happens naturally. 01:12:51 At the very beginning of Oakcliff, Madeline Gill, who is now a designer for North Sails, came in and she goes, “do you accept women into this program?” I'm like, “No.” “Like of course we freaking do!” “Get your ass in here, let's go.” So you have to have those decision-making and one of my favorite experiences on a super yacht was John Cutler, you guys don't really know these names but John Cutler, the skipper for America True, was racing with me in a super yacht and he couldn't make it to Saint Barts. I was at a conference with Sam Davies, who has just gone and goes around the world single-handed, really freaking fast, foiling. 01:13:28 And I was at a conference, and I go, “hey Sam, do you want to see our super yacht next week or next month in, you know, Saint Barts,” she just goes “sure.” That's how it's done. But if I was a guy, I would not have thought to ask Sam. So you have to have women in leadership. So all of y’all, buy your own boats, ask for people to be on there. It's natural. And then if you're not there yet, step up and ask the question, and when a guy starts to giggle or laugh, just give them the death stare. 01:14:04 Marbella: I would just add on to that, take yourself seriously. I think the easiest thing that, when you are the only, you know, girl at a regatta, or the only girl on the boat, is to laugh all the jokes off because you don't want to be the girl that's being annoying or kind of the buzzkill. But take yourself seriously because that's where your ego kind of grows from… it’s how others treat you and if you try to you know hide in the shadow, that's what allows the boys and other competitors to continue to like beat you up and be the dominant, I guess, energy in the room. But also lean on each other as girls; I think being in a sport where there are so few girls it's easy to kind of, again like, magnetize yourself to the only guys in the room or try to become friends with the 01:14:47 guys, because that's what you have, what you feel like you need to do. But really lean on each other, only other female sailors and other female mentors. I know there's probably few of them, but they want to help you, they want to see you succeed and, yeah, just believe in yourself, but also reach out to the other girls that you're sailing with and really be friends. Don't kind of feed off the competition. You're all there to succeed and really do nourish those relationships with other female sailors, Venetia: Kind of on that theme, who have your female sailing mentors been? Dawn: I'm so old I didn't have female sailors. 01:15:32 Actually it's changed and this is gonna sound corny, but we just did the Mackinac Race, which is an overnight race, for y'all that don't think there's overnight racing in the great lakes. And we had a 68 foot boat and it was my 60th birthday, so my mom forced me to come home to do the race because she wanted to party, and then she said to me, “you know, sweetie, I've been making cookies for the race since 1958, and I've never done the race.” So at 83, she did her first Mackinac. Anna: I think, for me, it's a little different. Like I had inspirational women that have inspired me along the way, not necessarily sailors. Like my mom is just an absolute badass. If any of you follow me and see her profile on Instagram, through mine. 01:16:32 She's absolutely incredible, so like she always inspires me and has from a very early age, you know I had a… you know like Dawn and Betsy Allison and that whole group of fantastic female sailors was something to aspire to. And, you know, I had athletes, not necessarily always female, that like I wanted to be like because I saw how hard [they worked]… and it wasn't, it had nothing to do with it being a guy or a girl– just their dedication to the sport and what they did really inspired me. But I think that women, not necessarily even in the sport, but like just positive female role models in your life, kind of inspired me and pushed me to be the best you can be all the time. 01:17:19 Marbella: Yeah and I think in a sport like sailing, where it is so multi-faceted. I mean, most of my, you know, sailing has been in dinghies or college sailing. There's so many different types of sailing and so I think for me the mentors were all very pretty young, close to my age. When I was young it was, you know, the older girls on the team. Or when I was in high school sailing, that was my high school coach. And I did a brief little stint where I skippered in match racing, this woman called Nicole Breault, she was an incredible female sailor. She is probably like one of the few, you know, consistent match race skippers in women's match racing. So just really, finding in every single niche of sailing, finding women that that are successful, but also consistent in the sport. That's been very helpful for me. 01:18:06 Venetia: How can each of you see that women's sailing is changing? What are you most excited about for the future of women's sailing? Start with Anna, maybe. Sorry. Anna: I think it's just exciting to see more and more women get into the sport. More and more women set new records and achieve new feats, and, you know, not just domestically but internationally. And seeing the sport for women in general continue to grow. I think it's really cool, you know, and seeing women becoming dominant in their fields in their sport, and therefore then setting an example for the next generation up and inspiring even those that compete against those women, you know, to be, to continue to be better, to keep pushing the bar, to see them infiltrating into other disciplines within the sport, whether it be on the boat or in the, you know, the engineering team or the design team, whatever it is. 01:19:10 But just, you know, I think we're all pushing in the right direction and, you know, it was told to me once, don't ask for your spot, earn your spot, right? And so like, just keep your head down, working hard and push forward, to keep, you know, getting to wherever you want to be, and I think there are women out there leading the way and we just need to follow suit and keep pushing as well. Dawn: absolutely. Also, some of the rules changes like with The Ocean Race, with Sail GP, requiring some gender diversity there, is absolutely critical. Because, I can't tell you, after the women's team, the America's Cup team, when we were winning races, like we beat Dennis Conner the first race. 01:19:52 They didn't say “those women did 58 tacks and kicked our ass,” they said “wow, that boat must be fast.” So until you're sailing with the guys, they don't believe. So they have to be there. And we're seeing good progress there. Also, Billy Jean King is a great friend of mine– we're celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Women's Sports Foundation this year. She started that with her first paycheck, prize money, five thousand dollars. She literally thought that the foundation would last for another 10 years and be done. 50 years later we're still fighting the fight so I'm freaking impatient, and I ask everybody else to become impatient. Marbella: Yes, I think I can speak a little bit on like the more youth side of it. 01:20:41 There's been, especially with college sailing, like I said before, they're doing the women's team racing circuit which is very cool. I know for match racing there's women's match racing clinics and regattas, and so those kind of niche kind of exclusive to women only events are very good places for girls to kind of build up their confidence. I think a lot of sailing has to do with confidence, and I think a lot of the disparity between men and women is that men might be a little bit more inherently confident, while whereas females might not be. And so, I think those spaces are very, very good places for women to become more confident in themselves and sailing. And, yeah, I just think it's very evident, you can see more, you know, more female skippers at certain events and 01:21:20 playing in the co-ed division during college sailing I just think there's a lot of opportunities, you kind of just have to go find them. Venetia: Thank you, and this one is more for Anna and Dawn: can you describe your experiences of running those kinds of America's Cup and Olympic campaigns? How you handle the sponsorship and how you were able to be successful. Anna: it's a full-time job. It sounds all glamorous doing an Olympic campaign, that you just get to go sailing every day. And you do, but there's a lot of on the land, like building your website, social media, building, you know, making connections, networking. My biggest advice is, just ask. 01:22:08 Most likely, you'll get a no, but every now and then, you'll get a yes. And so, you just gotta have the confidence to present what you're doing. Know that it's going to be a lot of hard work and a lot of no's, but when you do get the yeses, it really means something special, and it really helps you motivate. And yeah, I don't know, I think that's about it. Just ask and you'll get some yeses. Dawn: Yeah, it's long, it's hard, it's a job, but it's fun because you get to go sailing at the end. And running an America's Cup, you know. It is a multi-million dollar corporation and you have all of the different departments with 150 to 200 people. You have your HR, you have your chef, you have your training sessions, you have the technology... 01:22:48 The more that you're a team and you're interacting and working– we have a morning meeting at nine o'clock every single day in every campaign I've done, and that stays at Oakcliff. My job at Oakcliff is to make everybody there works so hard that when they do go to the America's Cup, like there's six people on the American Magic team, that seems easy. So, anybody who's coming to Oakcliff, send them, but don't tell them it's that hard. They will come out a much better human being for it. But it is a corporation. Venetia: Thank you, and our final question for the night is: is there a piece of advice you would like to give to young female sailors today? Classic. 01:23:31 Dawn: Okay, I always just say, “have fun.” I never say “go win.” I never say “good luck,” because we make our own luck. I just say, “have fun.” If you're having fun, if you're enjoying every single moment of everything you're doing, and doing it the best you possibly can, the winning part is almost accidental, and it feels easy. Marbella: Yeah. Just falling in love with the sport; there's no value– I can't explain how much value there is in doing that. You're likely probably going to be in your sport for a long time, and you're going to make your friends when you're little, and they're going to be the same people you're sailing against when you're older; so just love your sport, whether that is, you know, cruising, or doing more relaxed sailing. Just try what you can to fall in love with the sport, and everything will kind of fall in place, I think. Anna: I'll just share my two little mantras that I have. One is “follow your dreams” and the other one is, “do it for fun, winning's the added bonus.” 01:24:34 Venetia: Thank you so much– Anna, Dawn, Marbella. And thank you everyone for coming. Thank you for to Breakwater for hosting, and I'm glad to see so many people here tonight. Anna: Let's give Venetia a massive round of applause for this amazing night tonight.