C Properties'
Christy Steinman Crawford
(from a June 1983 article in "Latitude 38")

Christy Steinman is one of the few people who ever gets the opportunity to tell Dennis Conner where to go. She's been the navigator for Dennis and the Freedom 12 Meter syndicate during this past year of intensive training for the America's Cup.

Christy has high hopes of becoming the first woman to sail in the America's Cup. Her rival for the spot is Halsey Herreshoff, who helped Dennis win the Cup in 1980. Stiff competition to be sure, but Christy Steinman is no pansy herself. She has sailed on such formidable boats as Kialoa, Williwaw, and Condor. And she has trained with Dennis since May of 1982 as regular crew aboard the Freedom syndicate boats. Whatever happens she will be part of the Freedom team at Newport, RI this summer, either as the navigator or the backup. As such she may have the opportunity to carve a niche for herself in sailing history.

When I met Christy in the trophy room of the San Diego Yacht Club, she was dressed up for lunch, but her businesslike, no-nonsense decorum transcended her feminine appearance. I asked her if she knew of any other women in the America's Cup.

"I'm the first woman who's actively sailing on the 12 Meters," she explained. In the 1930's Mrs. Vanderbilt rode on the J boats and there was another woman around the turn of the century who came as a guest once, but neither was part of the crew."

Christy got into sailing comparatively late, racing Hobie cats in San Diego at age 16. Then she went to school in Hawaii for two years where she was keenly attracted to IOR boats. At age 19 or 20 she learned navigation aboard boats she helped deliver back to the mainland from such events as the Tahiti race and the TransPac.

She started racing actively in 1976, and did the TransAtlantic Race on a boat called Immigrant, Ted Turner's old Tenacious, a 49-foot Frers. She's done every Admiral's Cup since then and was selected to go on Williwaw, but of course Williwaw was withdrawn after the measurement fracas at the 1981 SORC. She sailed one year aboard the Argentinian boat Acadia, skippered by German Frers. She was also navigator on Kialoo for the disastrous 1979 Fastnet Race in which 14 sailors died during a sudden, vicious storm .

That comment really perked my ears up. "What was that like?" I asked. "Well , if I was going to sail on any boat in those conditions that was the most comfortable one," she said.

"About the only thing I can recall throughout most of the storm was the fact that I was down below most of the time trying to navigate. I overheard all the radio transmissions with people calling for help. A couple of times we relayed for those that were in trouble and couldn't quite reach one of the lifeboats."

"Personally, how did that race effect you, all that horror and so forth," I asked. "Did you want to lay off ocean racing for a while?"

"The one thing that bothered me was that Jim Kilroy got hurt," she told me. "We fell off a wave and he landed on a winch and two people fell on top of him, He was out in his bunk for the remaining 12 to 15 hours of the race, We didn't know how hurt he was, but we knew that his ribs were damaged, maybe even broken. Strong character that he is, he had never finished a race in his bunk and this wasn't going to be the one. He showered and came up on deck when we were surfing in toward the finish. We looked up and he said, 'I'm going to be up here, you know.' And he finished the race on the helm. In the 1981 Fastnet I sailed on Condor and it was 180 degrees different. It was such light air you could hardly finish the race."

I confessed surprise at her opportunity to sail aboard the 72' Kialoa. "I've seen so few women aboard the maxi's, especially as working crew," I told her.

She assured me that they have been very helpful, especially Bruce Kendall, the boat supervisor. She hasn't sailed on owner Jim Kilroy's new boat but crewed on Kialoa III quite a bit.

Back on the subject of the America's Cup, I asked how she made a living and still maintained the hectic training schedule that is imposed on the Freedom team.

"It's been difficult to try to financially work 100% at anything. You can't do it when you're committed to a 12 Meter campaign like this," she said.

They've been sailing almost every day this past winter, with only six or seven scheduled days off. The last two months they began at 6:00 in the morning, working out at the gym four days of the week and running two days a week, with Sunday off. Then they'd have breakfast and be down to the boats by 8 or 8:30. Whenever she's had a break, she has been doing some yacht brokerage work.

Christy lives in San Diego, but most of the crew was housed with families that opened up their homes in Point Loma. Some of the guys were pretty overwhelmed, living in plush homes with a view of the bay, and the San Diego Yacht Club has been very supportive. They'll be housed together in Newport, Rhode Island, during the trials, in one of the large mansions that accomodates about 45 to 50 comfortably.

"What's your schedule from now on?" I inquired.

"We're supposed to start sailing the 10th of May. We practice for sure from the 14th until the 2nd of June and the trials begin the 15th. We have four or five days off the first week in June where everyone's supposed to remove themselves and at least take a few days off. Then we start the intensive racing."

"You've sailed with Tom Blackaller aboard Williwaw," I recalled. "How do you feel about sailing with Dennis as opposed to sailing with Tom?"

"They're both (she paused, choosing her words carefully) ... unique! They're different in their approaches, they're different in their sailing, but they're both very competent people."

"Could you say that it's fun to sail with Dennis Conner?"

"Yes, I enjoy it. It's competitive. If it wasn't fun I wouldn't be working so hard!"

I asked her if she knew yet which of the four hulls Conner would select for the trials, "it will be either Liberty or Freedom. Liberty looks much better downwind, and I think she would have an edge. I would be surprised if it was not Liberty," she said. "They're both undergoing paint jobs and sprucing up so they will be ready for the summer. Whichever boat becomes the trial horse will tune Dennis up. They'll do some tacks and help the main boat get a feel for the sea, and then come back into the dock."

"Are they very similar hulls and rigging and so forth?" I asked.

"The boats themselves are a little different, but the rigging and the masts are interchangeable. We can take a mast out of one boat and put it in another boat, which surprised me to no end the first time I saw them do it last June. It took 'em 20 minutes."

This year for the first time, other countries are allowed to take advantage of America's advanced technology in the sailing field. Previously each entry was required to use products only from their respective country.

"It certainly makes it a little more fair," Christy commented, "so I think it's for the benefit of everybody. It's just going to be a little tougher...Eventually America will probably lose the Cup."

"I heard that the foreign competition is spending vastly more money than the American teams. What do you think they're spending it on?" I asked. "More advanced electronics, more sails?"

"I don't have any idea, but I'd guess the majority of the funds would be going toward sails," she said.

There has been much publicity in the past about the foreigners 'spying' on the Freedom practices. Christy told me about the British team chasing after Freedom in a rubber boat, filming with video cameras. When Freedom evaded them by sailing into deeper water, they merely returned the next day with a larger boat!

I wondered whether the American teams were making any attempts to keep track of the foreign competition, whether Freedom was receiving information about the other boats.

"Through the industry I've heard that most of them are using North Sails, so I'm certain that someone at North knows what's going on as far as the development of the sails. However, we have one fellow from North that does all of our work privately; he doesn't collaborate. He has a lot resting on this himself, so he walks around with his own private information and it will all be disclosed in September."

"What about the sponsorship and commercialism that are entering into this year's match that have never been there before. Do you think it's a good thing or a bad thing for yachting in general?"

"In a lot of ways I think it's a necessary thing; I believe it's helpful because you don't have to spend a lot of time fundraising."

That brought up the subject of the E.F. Hutton commercial that the Freedom team made for television.

"It was a three-day ordeal as far as filming it," Christy explained. "The weather wasn't very cooperative and the retakes were trying, It was 'Take 36, let's try it again. Let's put the boats back in the same area'. And I don't know how many times we did 'When EF, Hutton talks, everybody listens.' We had trouble coordinating the second boat so that you had an idea when you were supposed to 'listen'. You couldn't hear anything because the wind was blowing so hard. And the cameramen would want the boat 'camera right', and the skipper of Freedom, Jack Sutphen, would turn around and say, 'What do you think that means?'. Or they'd say, 'Freedom, could you move up a little bit', and there was actually no physical way we could sail in their lee; it was entertaining...They just didn't understand what it took to move the boats around, even though we'd taken the director sailing with us. He just wasn't aware of how much it took to position the boats."

Then I broached the delicate subject, "Has Dennis chosen the team yet?"

"It's fairly closely defined now," she stated, "The last two weeks we raced here we had an A team and a B team. And each one of the fellows have had a little interview with Dennis about what their chances were, and they rotate in and out. The majority of the crew is going to be returning from 1980. "

Christy dressed up for lunch at the San Diego YC.

"Do you think you'll make the final cut?" I asked.

"I don't know, I wouldn't be here if I didn't think I had a chance," she said confidently, then added. "It's hard to think of displacing Halsey Herreshoff, but I've sailed in the same boat with Dennis all but maybe ten days since last June, so that's encouraging."

It would be a real milestone for a woman to participate in the America's Cup, but Christy assured me that Dennis wouldn't give her any special consideration. "In fact," she added, "I think he pretty much forgets that I'm a woman after all this time."

I told Christy I needed to take some photographs of her, and she cringed. It was sort of awkward trying to fake some 'unposed' shots around the club since the boats were already gone. Then Christy's mother joined her for lunch and our conversation drew to a close.

What it boils down to now is whether Dennis Conner will stick with the navigator who helped him win the Cup once before, or go with the one who has been training with him for a year. If he does the latter, there will be a woman sailing in the America's Cup trials. And high time!