Miami Native Sarah Newberry Advances Toward Olympics By Fairlie Brinkley
Sarah, at the helm, and crew John Casey training on their new Nacra 17 in Miami the week before the ISAF Miami World Cup in early February. Courtesy photo.
his past fall, Miami native and Olympic hopeful Sarah Newberry became the first female skipper to win the U.S. Multihull Championship for the Hobie Alter Cup—and the first one to do it with a perfect score. Sailing with Kenny Pierce, Sarah ended a spectacular week of sailing with 14 first-place wins in 14 races. The U.S. Multihull Championship is one of the most prestigious events in the country, and while it is certainly an accomplishment to set a record-breaking win at a high profile event, what’s even better is when it comes on the heels of another victory. Earlier that week, at the F16 National Championship in Panama City, FL, she set another record as the first female helm to capture the F16 Nationals title with John Casey (Longwood, FL), her partner in a campaign for the 2016 Olympic Games in the Nacra 17 mixed-multihull class. It’s not just she, though. Florida is the place for multihull sailing lately. There has always been a strong multihull
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March 2013
SOUTHWINDS
Sarah Newberry. Photo by Marco Oquendo.
presence in the South, but over the past few years, many multihull racers, including Sarah and John, have worked hard to expose talented youth sailors to the world of high performance catamaran sailing. Thanks to that and the groundwork laid by others in the years before, something has finally started to happen. In results from multihull events statewide, the number of youth sailors is often nearly equal to that of adult racers. Several training programs have even purchased boats for their youth racers. Not a bad idea. A great example of this is the Sarasota Youth Sailing Program (SYSP). After purchasing two Falcon F16s last year, the program has produced skilled teams that are winning consistently in many geographic areas. In part, this growth is also related to the current climate of sailboat racing. The last few years have changed the face of our sport. High-performance classes like multihull, skiff, and boardsailing, are growing and diversifying. For multihull sailing, not only has the America’s Cup brought a new and wider range of attention to high-performance multihulls, but the introduction of the new Nacra 17 as a mixedgender Olympic class for the 2016 games allows for an influx of the female gender into performance sailing. The new Nacra 17 and Olympic mixed-multihull class are the perfect platform for a female helm like Sarah. With years of experience racing multihulls, and even a try at the 2008 Olympic Trials in the Tornado as a youth, Sarah is already on the hunt for a medal. Last fall she began her campaign for the 2016 games as skipper for superstar John Casey, a many-time Alter Cup Champion and Tybee 500 winning helm. When Sarah first started racing catamarans in 2003, she was a 105-pound, 15-year-old dinghy racer who had never gone faster than 6 knots in a sailboat. As a member of a family of passionate multihull sailors, who have lent her more than just a love for the sport, once she went fast, www.southwindsmagazine.com