RETURN TO THE RACECOURSE

A RETURN TO THE RACECOURSE

BY AMY BAXTER FELDER

One of the most unique characteristics of sailboat racing is a mixing of the generations. In few other sports does a person find his or herself teamed up and working intimately with folks who are decades older––or younger. I’ve sailed with people of all ages, seen older men and women with crazy, windswept hair and red cheeks on day three of the Mac race, and chatted for hours with younger racers about data and on-thewater trends. These experiences highlight the fact that sailing is a lifelong sport and a journey that, over time, can be both slow and fast, winding and straight. And the truth is that regattas will always be there, even if I can’t. If I can’t get the time off work or have other overarching responsibilities that leave regattas off the table for a period, there’s always next year, or the next. For us amateur racers, there’s sometimes a break in racing because life gets in the way. I think that’s especially true for women, who may take time off work and sailing to start families. For others, a drift away from racing may just be due to circumstance, such as a move across the country. The beauty of sailing is that you can always return to the racecourse, even after a 20-year break. Such was the case for my mom, Beth Baxter, who told me at the beginning of the summer that she missed racing and wanted to get out on the water, in any type of boat, for any length of time. “I raced because I loved being on the water and loved the competition,” Beth told me. “But life with three children and a challenging career got in the way, and I stopped competitive sailing 20 years ago. When I saw photos of my daughter sailing in Newport recently, I began to long for that feeling of competition: checking the wind on the line before the start, jibing or not jibing at the rounding mark, watching for lifts, all the little moments that go into a boat race.” With this mission in mind, I pulled up Google and started looking for an event we could do together in the Chicago area. I landed on the Sunfish Women’s North Americans Championship, which was taking place in late September at Lake Bluff Yacht Club. With a low cost and low barrier to entry, I signed us both up right away, booked charter boats, and helped my mom get registered with the class. We started discussing logistics and soon realized a lot had changed since the last time my mom had raced – a windward offset mark and gate marks were new concepts to her.

Beth Buckingham Baxter and Janet Baxter at Belmont Harbor, 1970s Amy Baxter Felder and Beth Baxter at Lake Bluff Yacht Club

I knew the event would be competitive, being an NA Champs and a world qualifier, but I also knew my mom would be able to easily manage a sunfish in virtually any conditions. Even without racing, my mom was still a fantastic sailor. It was the perfect place to return to racing, and we were both delighted by the warm welcome from the class of racers who helped us both throughout the weekend with our equipment and navigating the Lake Bluff beach. We encountered a mix of generations in the fleet that helped relieve some of my mom’s nerves, and it was an extra surprise that she knew several women from her racing days on Lake Michigan decades ago. We sailed ten races over two days in Lake Bluff, sometimes with heavy wind that made everyone sore by Sunday morning. In this case, the results weren’t important to my mom and me. What mattered is that we were out on Lake Michigan racing together. We rigged together, joked about how our wetsuits made us look, discussed wind conditions coming down from the bluff, and made several new connections while cracking lobsters at LBYC’s Saturday night soiree. Three Chicago Yacht Club members raced the regatta, each with a different goal and experience––me, Amy Baxter Felder (4th overall), Abigail Bennett O’Keefe (top junior), and my mom, Beth Buckingham Baxter. If there’s a takeaway from the weekend, it’s this: Age will never bar anyone from the racecourse. “What did I learn? What was it like? Very humbling! I didn’t think I would win, but I did think I could be competitive with the back of the fleet. I was wrong. There were a handful of women my age and older who sailed well,” Beth said. “And I learned from them that when I’m ready to retire, if I choose that, I could find a place to sail and race as much as I want. My time window is not closed, I could choose this again.” ✶

2022 Sunfish Women’s North Americans Championship