“I think you have personal
problem” said Matthias Regber to me on the phone, when I called him today while we (women fleet) were doing our “little” revolution by not going out to race. We couldn’t find him on the beach, so I took my phone to call him up. He as a manager of Choppy Water is responsible for organizing this weekend’s German Championships.
The afternoon in Sylt was a cloudy sky, but the temperature was quite alright (around 18C) and racing with 8-11 knots of wind on calm waters seemed to be blessing after two crazy days of every-five-minutes change in weather schedule.
It was going to be great and then we heard in the 9:30am skippers’ meeting that women start second – behind men. Women immidiately complained loud about it, but the decision by the Long-Hair-Race-Director (sorry for my ignorance and not not knowing his name, I will call hime here: L-H-R-D ) was made, and he wasn’t going to listen to
us.
He probably didn’t realize we spend last two years trying to make a crowd by enlarging women fleet and be more visible to media by starting first and most of all try to race separate and not mix with men fleet. To L-H-R-D it took about five seconds to cross that all out and “due to organizational problem” we (women) must had to have our start
second.
Wind came in around noon. We were sent out to race at 14:30. The red-six-minutes-flag for the men fleet was raised at 15:00. Our fleet was to start 6 minutes after their start. Just as we feared (and expected, because this is almost always the case) men had few general recalls. It was four this time, although in my opinion valid start was also overearly – but maybe it could not happen otherwise with strong current pushing the fleet on the course. (?)
Women waited for more than hour, just standing nearby starting line trying to keep straight on waves, with huge 11 meter sails… maybe demaging their backs. As it was to far to go to the beach and wait there, we had no other solution. We had our start as scheduled with this 45 minutes delay and we rushed right into the top men who were finishing the first lap of the course and were going for the next one. Man, you need to learn how to shout to make your way through! Then on the reaches it got even better. Forget about racing with other women. There were men only everywhere. We saw each other (girls) again on the second lap. Spread apart by miles after this “survival test”.
We went back to the beach and asked Race Director (who is never on the boat, but always on the beach for – I guess – organizational reason) to race our fleet after men’s finish as most girls reported it was not only uncomfortable, but definetely dangerous to mix fleets. The respond was “no” and it was clear nobody cared about our opinion. L-H-R-D said if we didn’t like his decision we should have had not race and gone home. So we stood there surprised and with no clue how to solve this situation. We tried to suggest few ideas like changing the course, making our race shorter, fit it in between men races, etc. but nothing had power to change the “NO” look on the L-H-R-D’s face. In the meantime we missed the race. (!) That was that revolution I mentioned earlier. I thought it was time to talk to the organizer Matthias Regber and actually the vice-Chairman of the Class. The guy always knew the women racers sitiuation and used to be very understanding and helpful. Well, maybe it was his bad day.
We decided to accept “the organizational” conditions and we went out for the next race. Fortunately (?) men started with no more general recalls and this time our race started just before men approach the starting area to go for the next lap. This race was fine. Women had competition against each other, men where further behind. The “Silver fleet” system worked no problem. We came back to the beach cheered up. Did it only seem to be unfriendly, just half an hour earlier?
Maybe there isn’t so many of us. Here in Sylt just 7. And maybe it will never be enough even when we are 15 like at the first event of Women Cup in Italy in April. But we are trying to make our way through and most of us spends free time on promoting the sport to make it bigger and does incredible job to find sponsorship to go to races around. And we only have these 7 events on “tour” this year. We chose German Championships to be one of them as we expected Germany with the biggest windsurfing market to be the best venue to promote FW and women windsurfing. Furthermore we are scheduled to have World Championships back here in September.
But it seems what we get in exchange is not just bad weather. We get bad attitute, total ignorance and no respect to our view. We were basically told to pack up and go home today. Then it should not be surprising that we have zero German female competitiors racing with us here for their homeland National Champ Title! Who would like to deal with this?!
We understand such a little group of people like “us” might be nothing but a problem on the way. More over we hate rainy weather, cold temperature (September is not a “warm 13C” July!), no place to change clothing, fat salami for lunch and zero media attention. Also 9 days of staying here is Sylt costs a lot of money, which most of women can’t afford.
Seven of us will lobby the rest out there to change the venue for the World Championships from Sylt in late Sept. to Belgium 21-25 August and run it together with IFCA Worlds. We are making a proposal about it to FWC Committee ASAP.
Dorota
more photos taken by Mom (the only pro photographer on the beach????) on my website www.DorotaStaszewska.com
