TALKINTRAVEL™

SF Women Making Waves

By: Ruth Wertzberger Carlson

It took a woman to start the America’s Cup, but 150 years later, 
few females are involved in this prestigious sailing competition. 
Three Bay Area women are breaking the glass wave, trying to make 
history by winning the America’s Cup in Valencia, Spain this spring.

In 1851, when Britain ruled the seas, Queen Victoria accepted a 
challenge from the upstart American colonies to race around the 
Isle of Wright. The yacht “America” famously won the bet and the 
America’s Cup trophy has  been the coveted prize of the world’s  
richest men ever since.

It doesn’t get any more macho than the America’s Cup. Wealthy 
titans use their considerable financial resources to try and 
capture the world’s oldest international sporting trophy.  
Larry Ellison, CEO and founder of Oracle, has spent millions 
of his own money on the BMW ORACLE Racing team. 
A member of the crew, he often takes the wheel. 
“It’s all about egos,” says Marcus Hutchinson, America’s Cup 
spokesman, which arguably is one reason so few women are 
involved in the competition.

It’s not due to physical limitations according to Dawn Riley, 
the sole female general manger of an America’s Cup team, Areva, 
the French contender. “Sailing is a physical sport, but it’s 
a sport that needs different size bodies and different skills,” 
says Riley, who lives in San Francisco. “You have to be in 
the top 10 percent of women in sailing to compete with the guys 
on these big powerful boats, but if you’re small you can be a 
sail trimmer, in the afterguard, (helmsman, navigator, strategist), 
or in the bow position. In this America’s Cup, I am bigger than 
seven men on the team. It’s an assumption that women are small 
things and they can’t be strong--that’s crap.” 

Riley, the first American, man or woman, to compete in three 
America's Cups and two Whitbread Round the World Races, 
complained that she’s no longer “one of the guys,” because 
she has to spend more time behind a desk than on a boat. 
“Last year I raced every race-this year I only raced four times. 
When I’m out there I realize how much I miss it. There is 
something about the stress relief of being out there and sweating 
and working through the pain…you don’t think about the fact that 
the budget came in a couple hundred thousand dollars under, 
or the human resources issues, or the sponsor problems… 
all you’re doing is concentrating on that single focus --it’s amazing.”

Riley says she’s not as lonely as she once felt in the sailing 
community. She recalled one Saturday a few years ago when all 
the secretaries had the day off and Riley was the only woman 
present on the base. “Today there are more females in professional 
sailing, they’re just not always on the boats.  Now you have women 
in the sail loft, women in marketing, women on the shore team, 
and in the sponsorship area.  They’re not always on a boat, but they’re 
in the America’s Cup and it’s a major sporting event. 
They’re doing a great job and getting paid and that’s progress.”

Melinda Erkelens is one of those critical women working onshore. 
A Piedmont lawyer, she’s a legal and rules advisor for the 
BMW ORACLE Racing Team. Although it may seem strange to need an 
attorney for an athletic competition, the America’s Cup 
transcends sports.  “It’s a really odd event based on a deed 
of gift two pages long that was written in 1887. The winner of 
the Cup is the trustee for the next race,” she says.

BMW ORACLE Racing is the official challenger to Alinghi, 
the winner of the last America’s Cup. The Challenger of 
Record approaches the Defender and makes a hip-pocket 
pre-race agreement, called a protocol. Since it is very brief, 
there is still a lot of negotiating that takes place before 
the actual racing. Whoever holds the Cup can decide on the rules.  
In class rule meetings between the Defender and the Challenger 
of Record, (BMW ORACLE Racing), Erkelens was always the only 
woman in the room. “It was me and ten guys,” she says.  

Teams must be sponsored by a yacht club and BMW ORACLE Racing 
flies the flag of the Golden Gate Yacht Club in San Francisco. 
Erkelens sits on the Yacht Club’s Board of Directors and serves 
as a liaison between the Club and the Team. 
The U.S. held the Cup for 132 years; the longest winning streak 
in sports history, and Ellison is hoping to bring the Cup back 
home where it would be on display in the GG Yacht Club. 
The winner also gets to decide the location of the next Americas 
Cup, so San Francisco could be hosting this prestigious event in 
the future.

Erkelens’ job requires the perspective of a historian, the 
experience of a sailor, the practicality of an accountant, 
a politician’s skill, and the cunning of James Bond. She helped 
draft provisions outlawing spying, including a clause forbidding 
helicopters from looking down on the yachts and taking pictures. 

The best advisors for the Americas Cup are those who know what’s 
worked in the past, according to Erkelens. “America’s Cup has 
turned in to a big spendathon and there are ways to control it 
or ways to let it happen,” she says. “It gets too silly.  
In the past there were big weather teams, 15 little boats looking 
at weather patterns. We decided we didn’t need an armada.” 

“It’s an amazing event that helps drive technological advances 
in the sailing industry. People spend a lot of money on R and D.  
Who can afford to do research and development? It’s trial and error, 
but this is a place where they are doing advances and the cost 
effective ones trickle down to mainstream boating, such as sail 
material and rig designs. That’s a really cool thing.” She benefits 
from those advances on her own Moore 24 foot boat.

An amateur sailor, Erkelens has competed in women’s match racing. 
“I’ve been 
sailing since I was about six and racing since my teens.  I grew up 
in the Bay Area and raced in four Pacific Cup races (SF to Hawaii) 
and one Transpac (LA to Hawaii). In 2005, I raced on Transpac with 
an all women’s crew, and we finished 2nd in the Cal 40 fleet. 
Working on an America’s Cup team is a nice way for me to combine 
passion and profession.”

She and her husband Bill began working for Ellison 12 years ago 
when they took care of his 80-foot-yacht Sayonara. “In 2000 Larry 
said do you want to work on the America’s Cup? This is a good idea, 
right?” laughs Erkelens, who said the multi-year event can take 
over your life. “Larry loves sailing, it’s a passion, and it’s a 
world where everyone is passionate about it.”

“We did a lot of traveling in the first campaign and now we have 
two children seven and nine years old so we need to be settled,” 
says Erkelens, who conducts a lot of her work from home. 
“This time I’m not completely absorbed by the America’s Cup which 
can easily happen. Aimee is in a good spot with her husband 
right there.”

She’s referring to Aimee Daniel, the Sailing Team Coordinator for 
BMW ORACLE Racing, who is married to team member Rodney Daniel, 
a grinder. “My job is taking care of onshore logistics so the 
sailors can concentrate on wining races,” says Daniel. “I look 
after our sailing team of 36 people. We have to be ready each day 
to take 2 boats sailing - with a crew of 17 on each boat.  
And, with the crew rarely being the same from day to day, compiling 
the list is somewhat intricate.  I am responsible for making sure 
this group knows where they should be, and when they should be there. 
If we travel for an event, I handle logistics on the ground once 
we arrive to these foreign places.”

“Because I have a sailing history and I know what it takes to 
produce results on the water, I can contribute to the onshore 
process and allow the sailors to focus on their jobs.” Sailing since 
she was a teen, Daniel’s accomplishments include winning the 2002 
Women’s Match Racing Worlds, the 2003 Santa Maria Cup, and the 
2004 U.S. Women’s Match Racing Championships. Daniel, who lives 
in Oakland, grew up around boats. Her mother and stepfather own and 
operate Pineapple Sails – a sail loft in Alameda. “Kame, my stepfather, 
started this business about 34 years ago,” she says. “They are the last 
Bay Area sail maker where a customer can actually see their sails made 
from start to finish.”

Aimee, who calls the Americas Cup  ‘a sea of men,’ says it’s a good thing 
that more women have joined the team because “women are so much better at 
communication. It’s amazing how men get anything done at all, ” she laughs.  
Working on the same team with her husband has its advantages.  “We have the 
same days off and I don’t have to ask ‘How was your day?’ I already know.”

Unless women find romance with another sailor, they can find it difficult 
to form relationships. Although Riley has a residence in San Francisco, 
she said she travels constantly, so her home is wherever she happens to be. 
Single at 42, she was engaged to a sailor who is now shore manager for the 
New Zealand team, a syndicate now located next door to Areva, and he isn’t 
speaking to her. “The sailing world is a huge extended family or soap opera 
depending on the moment,” says Riley. “Right now I'm dating a guy from Seattle 
who has nothing to do with sailing. Part of the problem with dating sailors is 
that I start out at the same level or below the guys in terms of skills and 
position and end up rising above them.”

“It’s such a coveted position to be a part of a sailing team that you need 
to focus your total commitment and your total life on it,” observes Riley, 
“and a lot of times women are less stubborn and smarter than guys. They say 
‘you know what, I don’t need to bang my head against a brick wall, I can become 
a doctor or a lawyer.’ So you have women dropping out for very valid reasons.” 

With San Francisco women leading the way, the glass wave is breaking. 
“I have competent, intelligent young women who are interning and believing 
that it is possible to be a professional sailor,” she says. “ That didn’t 
happen ten years ago. In 1992 there were six women out of 240 team members; 
we’re talking marketing, retailing, administration. Now a quarter of the 
team are women and this is something you are seeing across the board on all 
the teams, which makes it a more welcoming, less intimidating situation.” 


-END-