Santa Maria

The Santa Maria Cup women's match racing championship got under way yesterday in shifty, 10- to 12-knot winds that challenged both the race committee and 12 top-flight crews."

Northerly winds of about 20 knots greeted the Santa Maria Cup sailors yesterday morning, as the women's match racing championships entered its third day of competition, and Dawn Riley of San Francisco was perfect in the blustery conditions.Riley, CEO and team captain of the San Francisco-based America True challenge syndicate for the America's Cup, won each of seven races her team sailed in Round Robin 2. The victories lifted Riley into a second-place tie with Cory Sertl of Rochester, N.Y., who won six races yesterday.

Hannah Swett and Paula Lewin sailed three races yesterday, first to determine the semifinal seedings in the Santa Maria Cup women's match-racing regatta, and then to decide one of the two berths in today's final.Swett swept all three, but not before Lewin, sailing in her first match racing regatta, had a chance to sail away with a victory in the second semifinal race -- and watched the opportunity slip away.At the top mark on the first leg, after Swett had won the first match of their best-of-three semifinal, Lewin and her crew from M.I.T.

THE focus of many area sports fans may be on Pimlico Race Course this weekend, but Baltimore Harbor is the site of a watery racing event of national prestige that brings together top female sailors competing in the inaugural Santa Maria Cup.To be sailed tomorrow through Sunday in an area of the harbor easy for shoreside spectators to see, the event is believed by organizers to be the nation's first match regatta for yachtswomen."

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.

After eight rounds in the Santa Maria Cup sailing regatta, three semifinalists have been decided and the fourth hangs in the balance of a match between Dawn Riley and Mary Brigden Snow today in the last flight of round-robin races.Julia Trotman of Syosset, N.Y., Hannah Swett of Jamestown, R.I., and Paula Lewin of Bermuda clinched semifinal spots after each won at least two races yesterday.Trotman, who leads the regatta with a 7-1 record, won all three of her matches yesterday, including a close match with Swett in the third flight of the day.Swett and Lewin, tied for second with 6-2 records, are matched today.

Hannah Swett received the "death penalty" during the second race of the Santa Maria Cup championship yesterday -- and not even a reprieve by the regatta judges and endorsed by her opponent could keep her from being eliminated.At the top of the third -- and what should have been the final -- windward leg, Swett and Julia Trotman came to the mark almost dead even, with Swett trying to maintain inside position and force Trotman wide around the mark.The on-the-water judges ruled that Swett had not allowed Trotman clearance and assessed a penalty, which would require Swett to make a 270-degree turn at some point on the final run to the finish line of the windward-leeward course at the Inner Harbor.

J.J. Isler of San Diego, using the guile of a seasoned match racer, won four of five races her team sailed in the Inner Harbor yesterday and won the Santa Maria Cup, the first women's regatta of its type to be held in the United States.But for a brief time yesterday morning, it appeared that Isler's chances of winning the regatta were all wet.Isler entered the final day of racing in the three-day regatta as the No. 3 skipper and was matched against No. 2, Betsy Alison of Newport, R.I., who on Saturday had won the first race in their best-of-three semifinal series.

Replicas of the three ships Christopher Columbus first sailed to the New World were expected to arrive in Baltimore today, two weeks later than originally planned and running short of the money they need to complete their tour.The Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria sailed from Spain last October and have been visiting cities in the Caribbean and southern United States since their arrival in the New World. But the cost of getting the tiny caravels to the West Coast has officials of the sponsoring organization scrambling for funds.

It took Dawn Riley a little time to adjust to sailing a 22-foot keelboat after months of training in the 75-foot International America's Cup Class, but during four days of racing in the Inner Harbor the skipper from Detroit learned quickly enough to win the Santa Maria Cup women's match racing championship.Riley began the 57-race regatta on Thursday by losing two of three races. On Friday, her team won four of its five races, and on Saturday it won two of three to earn a berth in yesterday's final against Nicky Bethwaite of Australia.