Maria Cup

Sandy Grosvenor of Annapolis makes her living at the Goddard Space Flight Center, helping to design the next generation of space telescope. She makes her fun racing sailboats.This week Grosvenor and an all-Annapolis crew are sailing in the Santa Maria Cup, a women's match racing championship being held at the mouth of the Severn River.Her tasks on the water and at work both require a fine edge of intellect and instinct.At Goddard, the job is to build the perfect replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope.

From June 2-6, nine of the top 20 ranked women sailors in the world will be in Annapolis to compete in the BOAT/U.S. Santa Maria Cup match racing championship.Regatta organizers say it is the strongest field for the only qualifying event in the United States for the world championships to be sailed in Italy this fall.The Santa Maria Cup is a round-robin series leading to semifinal and final matches. The regatta has headquarters at the Eastport Yacht Club, and races are held at the mouth of the Severn River.

This is the time of year when chumming becomes the preferred method of many Chesapeake Bay fishermen angling for rockfish, blues and sea trout, and Richard Novotny has come up with a new twist to an old idea.Chumming is the process of baiting the water with fish oils and bits of flesh to attract fish, bringing them up current into the chum line where baited hooks await.On charter boats, head boats and hardcore recreational fishing boats, alewives are fed into a grinder and spooned or ladled over the side steadily enough to entice the fish but not heavily enough to feed them.

Maryland deer hunters surpassed last year's firearms-season totals in 14 of 23 counties this year, according to preliminary counts by the Department of Natural Resources.Overall, the preliminary count of 35,945 is 3 percent greater than last year. Preliminary totals do not include the figures from the two-day extension of firearms season that ended yesterday in 18 counties.Montgomery County had the greatest dropoff, with a decrease of 28 percent, while Calvert County had the largest increase, 53 percent.

Betsy Alison of Newport, R.I., has competed in five of seven Santa Maria cups, dating back to the match racing series that were sailed on the Inner Harbor in the early years of this decade. Yesterday off Annapolis, she finally won one."It feels great," Alison said after beating Paula Lewin of Bermuda for the championship. " Because until December I had never won a title on the match-racing circuit with this crew."Alison, a multiple winner of the Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year award, said crew work through variable weather conditions in the four-day women's competition was crucial and paid off well in the final.

The Boat/U.S. Santa Maria Cup women's match racing championship begins today at the Eastport Yacht Club in Annapolis. The International Sailing Federation Grade 3 race, a double-elimination, round-robin event, continues through Sunday, with racing beginning at 9 a.m. each day.Competing are: Betsy Alison of Newport, R.I. (with Nancy Haberland of Annapolis, Nancy Hood of Middletown, R.I. and Kristin McClintock of Newport, R.I.); Melinda Berge of Annapolis (with Molly Hughes, Julie Lynch and a crew member to be identified, all from Annapolis)

Melissa Purdy, of Tiburon, Calif., completed her domination of the Santa Maria Cup women's match racing championships in Annapolis yesterday by winning two of three races in the final round against Betsy Alison of Newport, R.I.Purdy, skippering for the first time in a match-race event, finished the four days of competition with a 13-1 record.Alison, a four-time Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year and a previous winner of the Santa Maria Cup, lost only three races overall, but all came against Purdy.

ANNAPOLIS -- Melissa Purdy, mainsail trimmer on America3, the women's team that competed in the past America's Cup, completed an undefeated sweep through the round robin of the Santa Maria Cup women's match racing championships with four victories yesterday.Purdy of Tiburon, Calif., won five races on Thursday and will be the top seed in the semifinals to be sailed on the Severn River today.Betsy Alison, the four-time Rolex yachtswoman of the year from Newport, R.I., lost only to Purdy in the round robin and enters the semifinals as second seed.

Yesterday on the Severn River, the Santa Maria Cup women's match-racing regatta kicked off five days of sailing with a celebrity race intended to do no more than get the attention of the media -- and perhaps to produce a few chuckles on the race course.Aboard Frolic, one of 10 J/22 sloops donated by their owners for use in the women's match-racing championships that will run through Sunday, the mood was light as Betsy Alison and Nancy Haberland discussed starting strategies -- whether to hack around or go for the jugular.

Officials of the BOAT/U.S. Santa Maria Cup have announced the preliminary slate of 10 skippers for women's match racing championships to be held May 29-June 2 off Annapolis.The Santa Maria Cup, which for several years was sailed in the Inner Harbor, was moved to Annapolis last year. The round-robin regatta is sailed in J/22 sloops.International sailors new to the field this year are Marie Boserup Klok, top-ranked in Denmark; Klaartje Zuiderbaan of the Netherlands, who has raced at Boston University and in Europe in several classes; and Canadian Felicity Clarke, ranked No. 15 on the Omega World Women's Match Racing list.