Just back from their impressive 10th-place finish in the SKUD-18 class at the 2015 Para World Sailing Championship at the Royal YC of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, the Good Karma Racing team of skipper Sarah Everhart Skeels and crew Cindy Walker took some time to give SpinSheet a glimpse into their training and goals.
The team is working hard to represent the United States at the 2016 Paralympic Summer Games. The Melbourne regatta was the first of the events that will determine which of the two teams campaigning will get to go to Rio; the other regatta is the Delta Lloyd Regatta in Medemblik, Holland, at the end of May. They finished two spots behind the other U.S. team, so they are focused on training from now until May.
Sarah has been sailing since 1996 (six years after her spinal cord injury) and racing since 1997, and got involved in paralympic-level sailing a few years later. First, she sailed Sonars—but as soon as SKUDs came out in 2006, she launched into sailing these small keelboats, which feature asymmetrical spinnakers. Cindy started into the sport in 2012 after talking with a disabled sailor at a spinal cord symposium; she started sailing the SKUD in spring 2013.
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Cindy Walker. Photo by Jen Edney for US Sailing Team Sperry[/caption]
They were both sailing with other teammates when they met at a regatta in the summer of 2013 and have been friends—and competitors—for two years on the U.S. Sailing Team Sperry together. When they were each ready to move away from sailing with their previous teammates, a coach encouraged them to get in the same boat.
“Our coach suggested we team up because of how close we already were and because he saw how we each operated within the team dynamic, on and off the water. We both have a huge amount of dedication to this campaign, to our team, and to our training,” said Cindy. Sarah agreed: “We are both very competitive people, find sailing to be incredibly freeing and necessary in our lives, and enjoy racing a boat together.”
In addition to being on the same wavelength as far as end goal and the commitment it takes to get there, geographically, it works well, too. Sarah and Cindy both live in Rhode Island, so they can train on the water and in the gym together very easily. Most people who sail SKUDs have been doing so as a skipper/crew team for at least five years, so Sarah and Cindy know it will take a big time commitment to catch up.
But being new at sailing as a team isn’t the only way Good Karma Racing is different. As Cindy puts it, “Our team is unique in that we’re the only all-female SKUD team in the world competing at this level. The class rule is that there has to be at least one female aboard. We feel that two women are better than one!”
“We’re also a very light team, so we get overpowered faster and need to be aware of rig tension in between races or if we think the breeze will build during a race. Sailing the SKUD is all about being proactive,” Cindy emphasized.
“Because we are competitive, our first inclination together is to note what we do wrong and not celebrate what we do right; so I’m going to take advantage of this space to note the pros! We have only been sailing together for a year… and we just finished 10th in the world and beat teams that were much better than we were six months ago,” Sarah said.
And they are having lots of fun as they work so hard toward their goals—and a big part of why it’s so fun is that the SKUD is a really cool boat. “This is the most fun of the P-class boats to sail because of the asymmetrical spinnaker. We can get going up to 16 knots in the right conditions!” Sarah enthused. “They are not as much fun upwind, but I suppose it’s a necessary evil that if you want to come downwind you have to sail upwind.”
“Two people with the mobility levels of Cindy and me can compete relatively fairly against people of significantly more mobility, size, strength and weight—we just have to work harder at it, because we can’t get away with as many mistakes. We don’t have much room for error,” said Sarah.
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Sarah Everhart-Skeels. Photo by Jen Edney for US Sailing Team Sperry[/caption]
“I also like that it’s a really physical boat. Being the crew, I trim all three sails and there are a lot of lines. We don’t get the chance to hike out, as in other boats, to help balance the heel of the boat, so we need to really be proactive with sail trim and driving to keep the boat from getting too heeled over in big breeze,” Cindy detailed.
To get ready for the May selection regatta, Sarah and Cindy plan to do some sailing in Clearwater, FL, over the winter to keep pushing their skills. Though Sarah says that Cindy is so hearty, she’d likely sail anywhere—they’ll likely hold off on training up in Rhode Island until late March/early April.
At the moment, sailing is not on the list of sports for the 2020 Games in Tokyo. While sailors and sailing supporters around the world hope sailing might be reinstated, it doesn’t look likely.
“We’re totally focused on these upcoming games and making sure we’re the team to go to Rio,” Cindy stressed. “After our campaign it’s our intention to continue to grow the sport of adaptive sailing through our Good Karma Charitable Foundation, and we’ll help out any way we can if a reinstatement is possible.”
To follow Good Karma Racing, visit goodkarmaracing.org
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By Kim Couranz
