Santa Maria

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.

Claire Leroy of France successfully defended her title Saturday at the Santa Maria Cup world match racing championship in the waters off Annapolis. Leroy, ranked No. 2 in the world, handled light winds and dodged heavy boat traffic to defeat Genny Tulloch of San Francisco, who also was runnerup last year. Fort Lauderdale's Anna Tunnicliffe, Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year, finished third. Three-time Santa Maria winner and 2008 Olympian Sally Barkow finished fourth. The U.S. skippers are vying to represent the country in the new women's match-racing event at the 2010 Olympics.

Melissa Purdy of Tiburon, Calif., continued her unbeaten streak in the Santa Maria Cup women's match-racing championships on the Severn River yesterday, winning two races to advance to today's final against Betsy Alison of Newport, R.I.Purdy, sailing with America3 teammates Hannah Swett and Joan Tarchette, sailed one pairing of the semifinals yesterday against Dawn Riley. Riley, from Mill Valley, Calif., was team captain of the America3 women's team in the last America's Cup.Purdy, the mainsail trimmer for America3 who is skippering her first match-racing regatta, now has won 11 straight, including each of the nine races in the round-robin preliminaries Thursday and Friday.

Clear skies and a light shifting breeze greeted the best female sailors in the world as they sliced through Annapolis waters yesterday. In town to compete in the Santa Maria Cup, the women got in a practice before the four-day regatta begins today. The Santa Maria Cup is one of the most highly regarded women's match racing events in the world, with only the Olympics and World Championships outranking it. This year, it has attracted the top two female sailors in the world, and teams from France, Sweden, Bermuda and the United States.

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.

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.

Team Nippon defeated the Santa Maria Cup Challenge, 2-0, yesterday in the best-of-three series to determine third place in the Columbus Cup team racing regatta sailed off Fort McHenry.Team Chesapeake and the PACT '95 team will sail in a best-of-five series to determine the Cup champion starting at 11 a.m. today off Fort McHenry.Earlier in the week, PACT '95 was 6-0 in the round-robin portion of the regatta sailed in Annapolis. Team Chesapeake was 4-2, with both losses coming against PACT '95.Spectators should be able to view today's races from Fort McHenry.

With a marathon racing session coming to a close Friday in the Santa Maria Cup, Suzy Leech, the bowman in Betsy Alison's crew, had to opt out of the day's eighth and final flight of match races. It wasn't injury or fatigue that forced Leech onto the shore early and race volunteer Jennifer Tyson into Alison's crew to fill the open slot. It was a fundraising commitment. That sort of departure was a first for this popular Annapolis women's match race, but it was just one of many signs that the winds on the Severn River were carrying an Olympic buzz.

Hundreds gathered at the Inner Harbor yesterday and watched with mixed emotions as the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria blew into town on a tour commemorating the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' first voyage to the New World.The ships, replicas of those Columbus first sailed, visited cities in Europe, the Caribbean and southern United States before arriving in Baltimore.Visitors who watched the ships come in had mixed reactions.Maria Norton had been waiting since 9 a.m., although the ships weren't scheduled to arrive until noon.

Let me introduce you to a couple of Valley girls -- Maria and Ynez. Sometimes they might seem as if they're in a fog, but they're cool, really cool.And that's why they make such radical chardonnays.The Santa Maria and Santa Ynez valleys are the two best winegrowing areas of Santa Barbara County, a few hours up the road from Los Angeles but a good 300 miles south of San Francisco.It is one of the geographic oddities of California that its coolest winegrowing regions lie a full day's drive south of its most famous growing regions -- Napa and Sonoma counties.

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - Michael Jackson, dressed in purple paisley pajama bottoms and looking more spectral than ever, listened yesterday in obvious distress to more than four hours of damaging testimony from the boy who has accused Jackson of sexually molesting him. In a dramatic start to a tense day, Jackson arrived in court more than an hour late, disheveled, limping and heavily medicated after what his lawyers said was a fall early yesterday morning that...

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - Even while breathlessly reporting The Very Latest Lurid Developments in the very latest celebrity justice case of the century, many journalists in the three-parking-lot news circus here are saying the same thing off camera and away from their laptops: Interest in the Michael Jackson child-molestation trial seems to be sagging at the strangest of times - just as the pop star finally goes on trial after so many years of accusations and...

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - Prosecutors handling the child molestation charges against Michael Jackson will finally reveal the details of their case before a jury today, culminating investigations into the pop singer that began more than a decade ago. With the selection of jurors and alternates completed surprisingly quickly, opening statements will begin today in Santa Maria, 170 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. The trial is expected to last for months and to detail Jackson's sex life and his interaction with at least one of the children he has entertained during sleep- overs at Neverland Ranch, his compound in Santa Barbara County.

In 1931, when the Knights of Columbus erected its Santa Maria Council headquarters in Canton, it was such a big deal that the mayor laid the cornerstone and the Catholic archbishop dedicated the edifice after a big parade. And why not? In those days, Santa Maria, at Highland Avenue and Fleet Street in Canton, was the fraternal order's biggest council in Maryland. Seven decades later, Santa Maria has shrunk from 1,400 members to perhaps 50 who are active, according to Darryl Jurkiewicz, a past grand knight.

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - First came the cuff-linked hand waving out the tinted window. Then the umbrella. Then Michael Jackson himself, elegantly attired for an ignoble occasion: his arraignment yesterday on felony child molestation charges, to which he pleaded not guilty. And, soon, there was a scolding - by the judge, who admonished Jackson for being 21 minutes late for his first court appearance. "Mr. Jackson, you have started out on the wrong foot here," said Superior Court Judge Rodney Melville.

Elizabeth Baylis and her crew, the reigning women's world match-racing champions, added the 2003 Santa Maria Cup to their trophy case yesterday after a grueling week of racing in the mouth of the Severn River off Annapolis. Baylis, from San Rafael, Calif., jumped to an early lead, reeling off nine straight victories in the first round of races. She went into yesterday's racing in first place, with 17-year-old Giulia Conti, the Italian sailing prodigy, and Paula Lewin, Bermuda's Olympic sailing hopeful, close behind, tied for second.

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.

Long after Christopher Columbus sailed from the classroom lessons of most Carroll students, seventh-graders at New Windsor Middle School remained engulfed in books, magazines and videos about the Italian explorer.The students -- 117 of them -- spent several weeks researching and writing individual biographical reports on Columbus and thengrouped together to tackle more in-depth projects relating to his discovery of the New World."I think this was the first time most of them were involved in a project of this size and magnitude," said Alan Powers, a seventh-grade social studies teacher.

With a marathon racing session coming to a close Friday in the Santa Maria Cup, Suzy Leech, the bowman in Betsy Alison's crew, had to opt out of the day's eighth and final flight of match races. It wasn't injury or fatigue that forced Leech onto the shore early and race volunteer Jennifer Tyson into Alison's crew to fill the open slot. It was a fundraising commitment. That sort of departure was a first for this popular Annapolis women's match race, but it was just one of many signs that the winds on the Severn River were carrying an Olympic buzz.

Sweden's Marie Bjorling, the top-ranked women's sailor in the world, handily won the Boat US Santa Maria Cup yesterday after sailing a near-perfect regatta in the waters off Annapolis last week. Bjorling won all but two of her 18 races in the round-robin tournament that started Wednesday, then she and her crew swept the semifinals and finals on a day when racing almost didn't start because of a lack of wind. "We made some mistakes the first day, then we didn't make them anymore," Bjorling said at dockside after yesterday's racing.