How Local Women Sailors are Turning the Tide

Erica Lush, a competitive sailor from Jamestown, practices on a Figaro 3 in Glen Cove, New York, before relocating to France last year to train for La Solitaire du Figaro Paprec. The prestigious offshore race takes place annually in France. Photo by Cate Brown

The boat was several hundred miles out when things started to come apart.

The Rhode Island-based crew was on its third day of the storied Newport Bermuda Race, a 636-mile journey through the Atlantic Ocean. Their Farr 40 sailboat had served them well until this point, but now, with a full day’s sailing left before the finish line, the gooseneck pin — a small piece of metal only a few inches long — had come loose from the place where it held the boom against the mast. Without the boom, there was no mainsail to propel them forward to their destination. Without the mainsail, the boat and its twelve-person crew were dead in the water some 600 miles off the coast of North Carolina.

The crew jumped into action. Two people held the boom in place, while a third hammered the pin back into the joint. Everyone remained calm, and within a couple of hours, they were back sailing for the race’s endpoint at St. David’s Lighthouse in Bermuda. The team crossed the finish line shortly before midnight on the following day, pulling into port the next morning to a cheering reception committee of family and friends.

Team Bitter End, named for the yacht club that sponsored it, placed eighth out of eighteen in its division in the 2022 race, and was twenty-seventh over the finish line — not a bad result in a race that annually draws close to 200 boats. Even more impressive was its makeup: almost entirely high school- and college-aged women. Seven students and recent graduates of the Lincoln School in Providence — including Milla Clarke, Sophia Comiskey, Callie Dawson, Gigi Fischer, Elizabeth Gardner, Phoebe Lee and Olivia Vincent — and then-twenty-year-old Portsmouth High School graduate Sarah Wilme participated in the history-making feat. Together with their all-female coaching staff, led by Ocean Race competitor Libby Greenhalgh, they made up the youngest all-female team to ever complete the course.

“It gave us a lot more agency, and we had a lot more people challenging themselves in roles that they wouldn’t normally take on offshore,” says Wilme, now a recent graduate of the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, about sailing with an all-female team.

While the history-making accomplishment was celebrated in newspaper headlines and magazine articles, reactions onshore were mixed. Participating in post-race festivities around the island, the sailors realized they’d become minor celebrities, with little girls asking for pictures and other female competitors congratulating them at events. At the same time, Wilme and others noticed some of their male competitors seemed doubtful the young women could have completed the race. Attending a navigator’s forum, Wilme and Comiskey couldn’t help but notice there were fewer than ten women in the room, out of approximately 200 teams. At one point, an older man joked they must be the “return crew” — a typically less experienced team brought on to return the boat to its home port.

“I was like, ‘Hey wait a minute. We actually did this.’ I looked up the boat that the people were from, and we actually did better than them,” Wilme recalls. “What a couple of us seemed to be feeling is that we weren’t being taken seriously as sailors, just as people attending the event.”

Their experience was not unique. In 2026, The Magenta Project — in partnership with Newport-based 11^th Hour Racing and World Sailing — published the 2×25 Review, a comprehensive report on equity and inclusion in sailing and the wider marine industry. According to the report, 66 percent of survey respondents report experiencing discrimination in sailing, with more than 85 percent of those reports among women involving sexism. Discrimination can take the form of pay disparities — professional women sailors earn a median of $35,000 annually compared with $49,000 for men — a lack of sailing opportunities and sexual harassment or abuse. According to The Magenta Project, the report shows that while 83 percent of respondents believe female representation in sailing has improved in the past five years, significant structural and cultural barriers remain.

Team Bitter End, comprised of eight students and graduates from the Lincoln School and Portsmouth High School, plus their coaches, became the youngest all-female team to complete the Newport Bermuda Race in 2022. Photo courtesy of Becca Hassel

“Sixty-seven percent of respondents continue to see gender imbalance as a significant issue within the sport,” the report states. “While progress is measurable, it has not been experienced consistently across all levels of sailing.”

For many women in Rhode Island, long a focal point of East Coast sailing, differential treatment based on gender has always been a part of the sport. Women interviewed for this story report being passed over for employment opportunities for men with less sailing experience, struggling to find sponsorship and learning which teams never sail with women. Some speak of an “old boys’ club” culture that, though less prevalent than during the twentieth century, remains pervasive in some sailing communities.

At the same time, the culture of sailing is actively changing, opening up more opportunities for women than ever before. Inspired by the glass ceiling-shattering achievements of the previous generation, young women in Rhode Island are breaking new territory, claiming space on the starting line and creating pipelines for female sailors to follow in their footsteps. Thanks to new educational initiatives, sailing at the recreational level is more accessible to women of all ages in Rhode Island than it’s ever been.

These women are redefining what it means to be a sailor in Rhode Island waters. Together with their peers, they’re pushing ahead against an outdated status quo to create a new standard for women in sailing. From the highest levels of offshore ocean racing to casual weeknight sails, they’re discovering joy in the sport and ensuring that young girls never have to limit their aspirations because of their gender.

Here are their stories.

‘THE REST OF THE WORLD MOVED FORWARD’

Lush during training in 2024. Photo by Cate Brown

It’s the hottest day of the year in Newport, and Erica Lush is preparing to take the J/121 sailboat out on Narragansett Bay. At Fort Adams State Park, the air temperature remains a sweltering 93 degrees at 5 p.m. Skipping nimbly along its forty-foot length, Lush unties the boat from the dock and jumps aboard. As the boat rounds the fort, she throws her whole weight against the rope to raise the mainsail.

“Watch your head on those ropes!” she calls out as wind fills the carbon-fiber sail.

Out on the bay, a Tuesday night racing series is underway. Lush grew up on these waters, walking to sailing classes at Conanicut Yacht Club across the water in Jamestown. Her father sailed the solo offshore racing circuit in the 1970s. Her mother, a software developer, also loved to sail, and the two met at a party in Newport. They raised their children in Jamestown, taking sailing trips to Vineyard Sound or around the bay on the family boat.

“I always loved that spirit of the solo stuff back then, and for years I was wondering where it is now,” she says about her father’s racing stories. “I’m starting to find that now with the one-handed [solo] racing.”

After sailing competitively at North Kingstown High School and Boston University, she returned to Newport in her twenties to work the yachting circuit. Despite her years of experience, captains often steered her toward roles in hospitality instead of on deck — a common experience for young women sailors trying to break into Newport’s professional yachting scene.

“It was a big responsibility, and I didn’t look the part. No one else was a petite, young female,” she says.

Eventually, a contact introduced her to the Maiden Factor, a nonprofit organization that uses sailing to advocate and raise funds for girls’ education around the world. The team offers training opportunities for female sailors aboard Maiden, the same boat sailed by the first all-women team to complete the Whitbread Round the World Race (known today as the Ocean Race) in 1990 — a historic feat that changed the perception of women in the then-largely male sport of offshore racing.

Lush sailed with the organization for several years, including two legs with the Ocean Globe Race team that became the first all-women crew to win an around-the-world yacht race. The experience cemented her aspirations to make a career of
offshore racing.

Her visit to Newport tonight coincides with a brief visit home from France, where she’s spent the past six months training with other offshore sailors. In the fall, she’ll compete in the prestigious Solitaire du Figaro Paprec, a nearly 2,000-mile single-handed race seen as a proving ground for offshore sailors. She’s the third American to ever compete in the race, and one of only eight women participating in 2025. Her long-term goal is to compete in the Vendée Globe, the single-handed, around-the-world race that stands as the ultimate test of a sailor’s endurance. In the meantime, she hopes to establish a pathway for younger women sailors by sharing her experiences and creating opportunities for others to participate in her training and preparation.

“Women are still not near equal numbers and representation in offshore sailing, and that has a big effect on continued entry into the sport,” she says. “In the Solitaire du Figaro Paprec, we typically have about 25 percent of competitors who are female, which is more than most offshore fleets. I’m really proud to be improving that representation at a high level.”

Cole Brauer, a part-time Newporter, became the first American woman to sail solo and nonstop around the world in 2024. Photo by James Tomlinson

Lush is not the only Rhode Islander with Vendée Globe aspirations. Cole Brauer, a part-time Newporter who made headlines in 2024 when she became the first American woman to sail solo and nonstop around the world, also has her sights set on the 2032 race. Brauer, a Long Island native, got into sailing as a student at the University of Hawaii and later sailed the yachting circuits in Newport and Florida. In her twenties, she tried out repeatedly for teams competing in the Ocean Race, but was denied in part due to her small size. Like Lush, Brauer’s build doesn’t fit the typical mold of a muscled sailor: She measures in at a petite five-foot-two-inches and 110 pounds.

Brauer with her parents, Kim and David Brauer, after completing the round-the-world race. Photo by James Tomlinson

“There was a moment that I realized I had to do it alone,” she says. “No one was going to take me seriously until I went out and did something totally bonkers and sailed around the world solo.”

A lucky break with a sponsor secured her a boat, and on March 7, 2024, she completed her round-the-world feat as part of the Global Solo Challenge. Two weeks later, the monthslong effort paid off when she was invited to try out for Team Malizia, an international offshore racing team. She is currently training with the team as co-skipper for a September transatlantic race and plans to compete in next year’s Ocean Race.

While Brauer was sharing updates for social media during her round-the-world journey, Kelsy Patnaude — a Newport-based artist who also works as a yacht captain — was strategizing how to commemorate her friend’s accomplishment from home. Like Brauer, she’d come to sailing as a young adult and staked out a spot in the predominantly male industry. In October 2024, she unveiled “KELSY PATNAUDE: AT SEA (with cole brauer),” a 100-foot canvas panorama at the Newport Art Museum documenting her friend’s journey.

“It was a way for me to express the inequalities of how women were seen in relation to the water throughout history, but also sort of focus on empowering other people and even empowering myself in telling that story,” she says.

Prior to Brauer’s round-the-world trip, the two women had sailed on the inshore circuit in Florida, where a fellow sailor made headlines in 2023 when she published an anonymous letter alleging sexual harassment during a post-race event. The letter sparked conversation throughout the industry, which both women
say still has a way to go in embracing the #MeToo movement that has swept through other industries and sports.

“Us girls get together and we compare notes and we talk about it,” Patnaude says. “You try to laugh about it, and in many ways things are getting better, but it still exists. It’s still real.”

Brauer puts it more succinctly.

“The rest of the world moved forward, and the sailing world didn’t,” she says.

Brauer with her trophy after placing second in the Global Solo Challenge. Photo by James Tomlinson

‘THEY JUST WANT TO SAIL’

It’s a Tuesday night in March, the time of year when Newport’s hospitality industry is furled as tightly as the sails on the boats in Newport Harbor.

Just over the border in Middletown, remnants of the latest blizzard are still melting in the parking lot, but inside the Helmway — the hotel bar of The Pell — the atmosphere is noisy and warm. Waiters rush back and forth with plates of tacos and cocktails, and laughter rises from the nearly full house in an atypical scene. Women of all ages, and a few men, focus their attention on the front, where Liz Isdale introduces the speakers for the evening.

There’s Betsy Alison, a legend in U.S. sailing as both a paralympic coach and an athlete; Carol Vernon, a naval architect; and Lynn Fitzpatrick, who helps run a nonprofit getting cancer patients on the water. There’s also a scholarship recipient from the IYRS School of Technology & Trades and a photographer sharing his latest project documenting lighthouses.

The room applauds as each speaker is introduced, and no one claps louder than Trisha McElroy. McElroy, a lifelong sailor, launched the hybrid networking and speaker series alongside Isdale and Jackie Dietrich last year. Dubbed “Mermaid Tales” by its founders, the group draws women sailors and boating enthusiasts for monthly sessions of learning and camaraderie. It’s the latest in a movement of groups and programs aimed at helping women of all ages feel comfortable on the water.

“There have always been women who liked to sail. But this sort of grassroots thing, that’s different,” McElroy says, a hint of pride in her voice.

Sheila McCurdy, one of the attendees, has more experience than most. The daughter of a yacht designer, she has spent decades in the world of competitive sailing and in 2009 was named the first female commodore of the Cruising Club of America. She moved to Newport in 1976 at a time when women often struggled to find positions on boats. Though the representation of women in the sport has improved, she says, it remains challenging for young sailors of any gender to find their footing after graduating college.

“As a woman getting sponsorship for offshore sailing, you have to be twice as good and twice as charismatic as anyone,” she says.

While many didn’t set out to break barriers, for women sailing in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, blazing new ground often came along with the territory. Doris Colgate, founder of the National Women’s Sailing Association, recalls there were few opportunities for women to sail together when she started the organization in 1990. Colgate was working as a secretary for Yachting magazine in the ’60s when she signed up for a sailing school run by her now-husband, Steve Colgate. Later, she noticed not many women were signing up for the school’s classes and began the outreach to other female sailors that would become the NWSA. The organization supports education programs for women, including AdventureSail, a mentoring program for girls ages nine to fourteen coordinated locally through Sail Newport.

“Once I got on a sailboat and made it go where I wanted it to go, I had so much self-esteem and confidence, I just figured I could do anything I wanted. I wanted to share that with other women,” Colgate says.

Today, several national initiatives support women sailors, many of them founded by the same women who broke new ground in sailing decades ago. Linda Lindquist-Bishop — a Newporter who grew up sailing in northern Michigan — co-founded the Rising Tide Leadership Institute with Katie Pettibone to equip young women with career leadership and skill development through high-performance competitive platforms, including sailing.

In 1995, Lindquist-Bishop and Pettibone were part of America3, the first all-women’s team to compete in the America’s Cup, where Lindquist-Bishop also served as co-director of sponsorship. At the time, she says, women’s sports were on the upswell — the WNBA formed the following year — and sponsors were beginning to recognize they could attract customers by supporting causes their audience cared about.

“We’d leave the compound — we had big gates, because security was a big deal, as it always is in the America’s Cup — and there’d be ten or fifteen girls out there waiting for signatures. We were just there to sail,” she recalls.

Since then, women’s equity in the sport has continued to increase, in part due to mandates and rule changes that incentivize women’s participation in competitive sailing. Amanda Callahan, head sailing coach at Roger Williams University — and one of only a handful of women heading a varsity co-ed sailing program in the country — recalls her time competing for Hobart and William Smith Colleges in upstate New York. At the time, women frequently found themselves shut out of opportunities, even in events officially open to them.

“I can’t tell you how many coaches I heard say, ‘Oh, women don’t like to team race,’” she says. “I was so salty about not getting the team racing opportunity in college that the year after I graduated college, I started a women’s-only team race.”

Today, college sailing has a separate team racing circuit for women, while other disciplines incentivize female participation by establishing gender ratios or team weight limits. Beyond the college arena, women continue to prove themselves in high-level competitions on Narragansett Bay. In September, top female sailors from around the world will descend on Newport for the inaugural Women’s International Championship hosted by the New York Yacht Club — a club that recently named its first-ever woman commodore.

“Those are the kind of things that are making a shift,” says Lindquist-Bishop, who notes women continue to increase in leadership roles within sailing, though movement is slow at the sport’s highest levels.

In 2024, the East Bay Sailing Foundation — an instructional nonprofit based out of the Bristol Yacht Club — received a $100,000 grant to support women’s sailing initiatives as part of the Truancy-Simmons Women’s Sailing Outreach Fund. The donation was awarded by Diana Kryston and Cynthia Simmons and named for Truancy, the boat they sailed with an all-women crew. The grant has funded scholarships and women-only educational programming, including a Monday night sailing series that sold out in less than an hour. It’s also led to the creation of the Narragansett Bay Women’s Sailing Collaborative to promote women’s sailing across the region.

“Now we’ve got over 140 women who are on our distribution list and we’re representing members from seventeen yacht clubs and sailing associations,” says Susan Grandpierre, who oversees the collaborative. “You have this feeling that you’re providing something that women have wanted, and it hasn’t been available. And it’s lovely to see it happen.”

Today, many adult women are discovering — or rediscovering — sailing through community boating centers such as Sail Newport or woman-specific programs run through local yacht clubs. Kim Hapgood, program director for Sail Newport, says many of the women who come to their programs have spent years sailing on boats with their husbands or friends and are looking to step up and play a more active role in the sport.

Barbara Petrocelli, lead volunteer for women’s sailing for the Narragansett Bay Yachting Association, has noticed a similar trend among the group’s member organizations. While girls are well represented among youth sailors, she says, participation tends to drop off as women get older and household or career responsibilities take over. Much of the current programming is geared around finding ways for women to opt back into the sport.

“That really comes down to creating a safer environment where women can either learn to sail the first time or reenter after a sabbatical,” she says.

The growing interest is visible at the Helmway in Middletown, where the buzz of sailing talk and the clinking of glassware indicate another successful event. In one corner, a self-taught young sailor on a cruise around the world talks boats with Newport locals, while in another, veteran racers trade tips on upcoming events.

. Brauer on her boat, First Light, coming into port in A Coruña, Spain, on March 7, 2024. Photo by Alvaro Sanchis

“I think these women have decided they’re just going to sail whatever way they can,” McElroy observes. “They’re not trying to break a ceiling — they just want to sail.”

As boats appear once again at the moorings of Newport Harbor, the next generation of female trailblazers is making their summer plans. Cole Brauer is training for the Ocean Race Atlantic with Team Malizia and has her sights set on next year’s worldwide Ocean Race. After completing her first Solitaire du Figaro Paprec last fall, Erica Lush is currently in France competing in her second iteration of the race. (A Frenchwoman, Charlotte Yven, made history as the first women to reach the race’s overall podium when she placed second last year.) Sarah Wilme has sought out opportunities to pay her sailing knowledge forward through coaching, including a stint with a New Bedford-based youth team that will take on the Newport Bermuda Race this year. And throughout the state, women of all ages are
discovering and rediscovering the joys of sailing, a sport that’s much more than a simple pastime.

For most of these women, claiming new firsts is not a goal so much as a byproduct of entering an industry that for centuries has been dominated by men. They sail to connect, and to feel empowered on the water even as they gain confidence beyond the bay. Sailing, for them, is a way of life, one they embrace alongside their peers. And if a few assumptions get overturned along the way — well, that’s just a little extra wind in their sails.

LEARN TO SAIL

These local organizations offer women-specific sailing classes for all experience levels.

Conanicut Island Sailing Foundation

Enjoy a relaxed evening or morning on the water, featuring as much or as little instruction as you’d like. Offered on Mondays and Wednesdays. jamestownsailing.org

East Bay Sailing foundation

A weekly women’s sailing program offered on Monday nights from mid-June to mid-August, this class is open to all ages and abilities. eastbaysailingfoundation.org

Kimberly Lannigan, Molly Gregory and Diana Perdomo during a women’s sailing class at the East Bay Sailing Foundation. Photo courtesy of East Bay Sailing Foundation/Kimberly Lannigan