The
happiest sailing celebration I ever saw was not
when New Zealand won and later defended the America's
Cup or when Bill and Carl Buchan, father and son,
won Olympic gold medals on the same day at Long
Beach in 1984.
Close
but not quite. It wasn't even to celebrate a victory,
other than a triumph of the human spirit.
It
was at Waikiki in 1997 when Linda Elias greeted
her all-woman crew as they sailed the chartered
Santa Cruz 50 Bay Wolf into Ala Wai Yacht Harbor
at the end of the Transpacific Yacht Race.
Elias,
47, of Long Beach, had assembled the team with co-skipper
Betty Sue Sherman of San Diego, chartered the boat
and all but fulfilled her dream.
Elias
was diagnosed with ovarian cancer early in 1994.
Amid six surgeries and chemotherapy, she missed
the '95 race but by God she wasn't going to miss
another one. The team practiced, planned and was
as prepared as possible.
Then,
five days before her class was to start, the disease
struck again. Built-up scar tissue from the surgeries
caused blockages that sent Elias back for another
operation, and there she lay as the race got under
way.
The
evening after Bay Wolf sailed off, Elias, weak and
in pain, tried to put a positive spin on it. She
told a visiting couple, "Here I am in a warm
hospital bed with people waiting on me. If I was
out there I'd be cold, wet and miserable."
She
paused and frowned.
"I'd
rather be out there," she said.
It
got worse. A few days later she heard that the fleet
was making record time.
"Oh,
my God," she wailed, "they're having the
windiest race of all and I'm not there!"
Still,
there was a blessing. While removing the scar tissue,
surgeons discovered another small tumor they wouldn't
have found otherwise.
Elias
said, "I don't want anyone to feel sorry for
me. My time was not wasted."
And
she was determined to make the best of a rotten
deal. If she couldn't sail with her team, she'd
at least be there to meet them. Boy, were they surprised
when they saw her standing there, two weeks after
major surgery, laughing and wearing a lei as large
as the smile on her face. That moment now defines
Linda's life.
Some
of the women had sailed with her when she won the
prestigious Women's One-Design Challenge regatta
at Long Beach in 1992, '94 and '96. She was the
first to win it three times before Claudia Wainer
tripled in '99-01. The '96 win was especially tough,
coming right after a chemo series when she could
barely stand at the helm.
In
'99, Elias did sail the Transpac again, not with
an all-woman crew but as a primary driver on Steve
Popovich's Nelson/Marek 68 sled, Cheval 88.
Whatever
strides women have made in sailing over the last
couple of decades they owe in large part to Linda
Elias and others like her who led the way. I once
assumed she started sailing only when she met Mike
Elias, a racer, boatwright and delivery sailor who
was commodore of the Long Beach YC this year.
"I
didn't meet Mike until 1980," she corrected
me with only a bit of indignation. "I'd already
had three sailboats. I got involved in women's sailing
in 1975 and '76 at Dana Point with the Dana Belle
races, and in '79 I helped to organize WORSA [the
Women's Ocean Racing Sailing Assn.]."
Nobody
ever told her she couldn't be a serious sailboat
racer---or, if they did, she ignored them.
"I
guess my upbringing has never let me feel like I
couldn't do something because I was the wrong gender,"
she said. "I played baseball and climbed trees
and sewed and had dolls. To me, there wasn't any
'man' thing or 'woman' thing. I didn't know any
better."
She
laughed, the kind of free, musical laugh that lights
up a room. Win or lose, Linda could always laugh.
She even laughed at cancer.
A
positive person by nature, she has little tolerance
for negativism. Remember that now when you think
of her.
"I've
noticed sailing with mostly male crews that there
seems to be more competition among the team members,"
she once said. "I don't like that."
Crew members with downbeat attitudes didn't stay
long with Linda, as one learned the hard way.
"When
I was sailing during all this cancer treatment I
decided I couldn't handle any negativity on the
boat. I had to ask her not to come anymore. With
the women I've sailed with, there's more of a teamwork
attitude. I felt really bad, but I thought, 'Well,
she can't kill me. I already have cancer!' "
She
laughed again. May she laugh forever.
