Press Release
For Imediate Release
May 5

Report from Eliza Cleveland (USA) crewing for Annie Nelson in the Womens Hobie 16 World Championship


Hello Race Fans!!!
This is my first report from the Women´s Hobie 16 Womens World Championship! I am down on the Riviera Maya -- about an hour south of Cancun on the Yucatan Peninsula. I got here two days ago and it is about 85 degrees during the day going down to about 70 at night. The hotel that is hosting the World Championship is huge with a huge pool, beach, spa, and I’m not sure what else. I have done absolutely
nothing except eat eat eat since my skipper and I weighed in only .7 kilos over the minimum weight.

Today was the first day of racing for the following World Championships: Youth, Masters, Grand Masters, and Womens. There are 60 boats provided by the Hobie Cat Company, and so there are two heats of sailing. In the morning the Masters and Grand Masters went out first while the Women and Youth waited on the beach.

Finally it was our turn, and the conditions had gotten more and more perfect. By the time we got out to the race course, it was blowing about 14 knots and there was some chop and waves.

We had an amazing first start. We were probably in fourth place and then rolled the boat in third place. But when we got to the windward mark, we HIT it (which is a huge no-no) and we had to do a "penalty turn" which meant that we had to turn 360 degrees on the water. It is a very very slow thing to do and means that all the boats that are close to you just zoom by you. We caught up with some boats down wind, but then on the next beat, we hit the mark again. Annie Nelson (my skipper) was trying to stay on the trapeze as we started rounding the mark, but she got tea-bagged and
flew off the back....thus forcing us to hit the mark again. So we did another 360! But we did catch up with some of the pack and ended up finishing in 7th place (out of 18 boats).

Race 2 the conditions were fairly similar except that the waves were getting a little bigger. Our start wasn’t the greatest, and then we actually hit another mark. Our rudder got caught on the line and kicked up slowing us way down. At this point we were second to last.

We tacked and went to the right side of the course where no one else had gone...we had nothing to lose... But it paid off and we rounded the windward mark in about 7th place. We kept going to the right side of the course on every beat, and eventually we ended up finishing in third place in that race.

We are in 5th place overall and the top American team.

We have two more days of racing.

Liza Cleveland