Sunfish Women's North American Championship to be held in Great South Bay

Barbara Meier is on a mission to race or sail her Sunfish in all 50 states. So far, she’s made 42, including Alaska.

On Friday, she found herself in Amityville, where she was gearing up to participate in the Sunfish Women’s North American Championship. The winner will go to the world championship in Ecuador next year and represent the United States.

Meier, 63, only started sailing three years ago and wasn’t expecting to win or even place high. But she was thrilled just to be racing among some of the top women sailors in the country. They came from as far as Washington state and Florida, and ranged from teenagers to women in their 70s who have been sailing for more than six decades. Several were previous national champions.

A practice race took place Friday in Great South Bay off the Dinghy Shop in Amityville, with the full competition set for Saturday and Sunday among some 50 competitors.

“There is no way I should be in a championship regatta,” said Meier, who currently lives in Sarasota, Florida. But the competition was open to anyone, though most were accomplished sailors.

It was a sign of the camaraderie among the women sailors that she said she felt fully accepted and warmly embraced, as top sailors freely gave her advice on everything from how to rig her boat to how to sail upwind.

Another competitor, Libbie Tillman Fitzgerald of Bellevue, Washington, said, “Just sailing with women is unique,” adding that it creates a “female energy.”

The Sunfish is one of the most popular boats on the planet, with at least 500,000 of them produced since it fully came on the scene in the 1960s. It is a spinoff of the Sailfish, which is like a surfboard with a sail on it, originally used by lifeguards for rescues. Boat makers added a cockpit for comfort so people could sit more easily and, along with a few more features, came up with the 14-foot Sunfish.

Jim Koehler, owner of the Dinghy Shop who is hosting the championship and himself a top sailor, said people can learn to sail the relatively simple Sunfish in a day. But to get to the level of the top competitors involves a whole other range of skills, from figuring out water currents and wind shifts, adjusting sails and “hiking out” — that is, leaning off the boat when the wind blows hard.

The single-sail Sunfish is particularly appealing for women because you don’t necessarily have to be big or brawny to sail it, he said. “Women can sail the boat with authority,” he said. “It’s not a male-dominated or strong, big adult boat.”

Lee Parks, a former national women’s Sunfish champion from Newport, Rhode Island, who has been sailing for six decades, said she was thrilled to be at the regatta in Amityville.

“This is going to be phenomenal,” she said. “We love the Great South Bay. It’s just perfect for Sunfish.”

Susan Tillman Berg, whose mother was a Sunfish women’s national champion and whose father was a member of the 1976 U.S. Olympic sailing team, said the Dinghy Shop is nationally known in sailing circles and was an ideal place to host the race.

“This is like an icon in the sport,” she said. The trophy for the championship is now named after her late mother, Linda Tillman.

Meier said she had a good day on the bay Friday, as she piles up sailing experiences in places including Lake Tahoe — on both the California and Nevada sides. If she makes it to all 49 states on the mainland, she said, she plans to fly to Hawaii and rent a Sunfish there so she can claim all 50 states.