special feature
| home contact us movies galleries recent stories archived stories store |
 Vikki and Rowan Fennell doublehanding the Moore 24 Paramour in the 2009 Delta Ditch Run. ©2011 norcalsailing.com |
|
Sailing Valentines February 14, 2011 Happy Valentine's Day, dearest reader! In celebration of the lovers' holiday, local sailing couples tell their own stories. Rowan and Vikki Fennell We met sailing of course! It was 2003 and at the time one of my roommates was helping Rowan get his Moore 24 Paramour into racing shape. Before that she had been a family Delta cruiser. They invited me to do bow for the Berkeley YC midwinters. We had met a couple times previously when we had America's Cup viewings at the apartment or when we went out in Alameda, but our friendship was established when we started sailing together. We soon discovered that we grew up in the same town, went to all the same schools through high school, our parents lived about five minutes from each other, and his older brothers were my first sailing instructors at junior sailing camp. Our first official date was breakfast and a Sunday sail on Paramour. Morning turned to afternoon turned to evening and basically the date never ended and we have been together ever since. We were married 20 months later in 2004 at San Francisco YC, and we sailed away from the ceremony on Glenn and Gabby Isaacson's custom Schumacher 40 Q. In 2009 we bought Rowan's childhood home in downtown Fairfax, Marin County. We welcomed our daughter and newest crew member Lucelia Rose into the world in September 2010.
We sail together mostly on our Moore 24 in the Roadmaster Series, Sausalito YC beer cans and Midwinters on Harriet and Pagerie Lehmann's Merit 25 Trasher or on Rowan's uncle's Soverel 33 Good and Plenty.Some of our racing highlights are winning our fleet in the 2004 Delta Ditch Run, 2005 Spring Keel, 2006 Moore 24 Pacific Coast Championships, and, the crowning achievement, winning the 30th Moore 24 Nationals in Santa Cruz in 2006. Over the last eight years sailing together we have had some growing pains as we have learned to sail as a team. We have done our share of yelling at one another, but as Rowan says, "I'm not yelling at you, I am just talking loudly so you can hear me," and we have learned to leave it on the water. For the past several years we have sailed the Delta Ditch Run doublehanded, which is always a lot of work. There is generally some profanity exchanged but we always remain married at the end of each race so we take it as a good sign. We have gotten very comfortable with each other on the boat and work well as a team. We shoot for top five in any race and, after sailing all these years, our greatest goal is to have a good time. If it isn't fun than there is really no point in doing it. Our pipe dream is to buy a Santa Cruz 52 and sail with our children, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and cousins in the Pacific Cup to Hawaii. Until then we will continue to campaign Paramour in the Roadmaster Series, sail with friends and family, and cruise our Lancer 37 in the Delta. - Vikki Fennell Barry and Sylvia Stompe Barry and I met in 1998 doing a Tuesday Sausalito YC beer can race, and have been racing, day sailing and cruising together ever since. We had our Islander 36, Tomcat, from 1999 to 2006. We were I-36 champs in 2006. We had bought Iolani, a Hughes 48 yawl, in July of that year, so we sold Tomcat in October. She is now Moondoggie, sailing out of South Beach YC.
Barry knows if we don't get out on Sunday, my day off, I will get very unhappy! At a party last week, an acquaintance asked Barry how he talked me into doing the Three Bridge Fiasco. Barry just laughed, "It was Sylvia who insisted we do it!" We are signed up for the Party Circuit and Summer Sailstice race, plus we hope to race more in SSS doublehanded events. It's tough because I work Saturdays, so I need to plan ahead to get time off. We have plans to cruise Iolani, we just don't know when or how. Sailing is definitely the key to our happy marriage.
Barry had bid on Iolani, then called Buena Vida, in 1990, and was outbid by the man we bought her from in 2006. That owner renamed her and changed the hailing port to Lahaina, but she never made it to Hawaii. They had engine and weather troubles two days out, brought her back, and she ended up being rented out for people to live on at Clipper Yacht Harbor. Barry happened to see her and asked around, found the owner, who accepted our offer. It took 1-1/2 years to bring her back to sailing condition, totally worth it because we are so happy with the way she sails. So the boat story is a love story too! - Sylvia Stewart Stompe Tom Patterson & Sue Estey In our experience there aren't a lot of sailing couples racing keelboats doublehanded. Sue Estey and I race Dazzler, a Wyliecat 30. We met on the 1996 Vallejo Race when Sue came to crew on Frank and Chrie Tomsick's Beneteau 35s5 Boogie Woogie. The result is that we have been sailing together ever since.
Four years ago we bought the Wyliecat 30 Dazzler (ex-Tinsley Light V) with the specific plan to race together. Since then we have done almost all the SSS races together doublehanded and in 2009 won the YRA Party Circuit Short Handed Division season championship. We really enjoy sailing together and sharing the experience. Sue is a great crew and an excellent photographer. Her photos taken during races have appeared in Latitude 38 and on her photo website: www.pbase.com/estey/sailing.
Two years ago on Valentine's Day I got down on one knee, with a ring, and proposed marriage. That day is yet another story. Two years later we are still not yet married (some say if it ain't broken, don't fix it), but continue to talk about where, when and how. In the meantime we continue to race together and have a great time. Most recently, we did the Three Bridge Fiasco where we did not do so well overall, but are proud that we finished. It was a long day! - Tom Patterson Gordie Nash & Ruth Suzuki Gordie crossed the room to offer to buy me a drink. That was at the 1994 NOOD Regatta. I asked him out to hear my favorite South African band playing at Slim's and dinner at an Indian restaurant in the Mission. A wedding omen appeared that first night: Whitney Gilmour, a Richmond YC Junior sailing in the NOOD, came up to us and stated, "If you two are going to get married, I'm gonna be your flowergirl." What seas we've crossed since then! Our first sail date was the Doublehanded Farallones on a J/35. We were on starboard closing in on the island when Gordie yelled, "Let the mainsheet out, NOW. We're gonna T-bone Pegasus."
We were married at RYC on 1-1-00 because there weren't any races scheduled that day, all our friends could come, and the club was available because everyone thought the power would go out.
We've done five Pacific Cups and a Pineapple Cup. With Arcadia we were the 2008 SSS Doublehanded Season Champions, and won the Manuel Fagundes Seaweed Bowl in 2010 and numerous other Bay/ocean races together. Our relationship is definitely best on a boat where we are inseparable. - Ruth Suzuki
|
||||||||
