The Progress Is Showing
Great Lakes ILCA Championship | Rochester, New York
October 12, 2026 — Somewhere over America
I'm writing this from an airplane, somewhere between Rochester and home.
Another regatta in the books. Another cross-country flight. Another weekend away from my family.
But this one feels different.
I finished 6th overall and 1st woman at the Great Lakes Championship.
And when the ranking points are calculated, I expect this result to move me up to 5th in North America.
Let that sink in for a minute.
Two years ago, I was just getting back into a boat after more than two decades away from Olympic-class racing. I was overweight, out of shape, and had absolutely no idea whether I could become competitive again.
Today, I'm sitting on a plane with a result that tells me something I've been working incredibly hard to prove to myself.
The progress is showing.
Progress isn't always linear
One of the hardest parts of this comeback has been learning to measure progress differently.
There have been regattas where I've finished near the back of the fleet. Days when I've felt completely outmatched. Races where I've wondered whether I'm actually getting better or just getting better at being uncomfortable.
I've sailed against Olympians, world champions, and athletes who have spent the last twenty years doing the very thing I stepped away from.
And I've had to remind myself, over and over, that I'm not starting from the same place they are.
But I also refuse to use that as an excuse.
I've spent hundreds of hours training, rebuilding my strength, learning to trust my body again, and trying to close the gap between the sailor I was at eighteen and the one I'm capable of becoming at forty-two.
Some days, that gap feels enormous.
This weekend, it felt a little smaller.
Sixth overall. First woman.
Not a podium finish. Not a championship title.
But real, measurable progress.
And I'll take it.
The part you don't see
When I share photos from a regatta, you see the boat, the water, the competition. Maybe a beautiful sunrise or a windswept finish.
What you don't see is everything it takes just to get to the starting line.
The flights. The rental cars. The hotels. The entry fees. The equipment. The logistics of getting a boat to a venue thousands of miles from home.
And then there's the cost that doesn't show up on a credit card statement.
The missed bedtime stories. The weekends away from my family. The work squeezed into the hours before and after training. The mental gymnastics of being fully committed to something that demands so much while knowing there are people at home who need you, too.
I knew pursuing an Olympic campaign wasn't going to be easy.
I'm not sure I fully understood how much of the challenge would happen before I ever got on the water.
And as this season draws to a close, the financial reality of what I'm attempting is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
When the results start catching up to the effort
Here's the thing about chasing something ambitious.
For a long time, you have to believe in progress you can't necessarily see.
You put in the hours. You make the sacrifices. You spend the money. You show up to another starting line and hope that something is clicking into place.
Sometimes it does.
Sometimes it doesn't.
And then you have a weekend like this one.
A weekend that reminds you that the work is accumulating. That the hours in the gym and on the water are translating into something tangible.
That maybe, just maybe, the distance between where you are and where you want to be isn't quite as impossible as it once seemed.
It's incredibly validating.
And, if I'm being completely transparent, a little terrifying.
Because the better I get, the harder it becomes to imagine walking away.
The cost of continuing
As I sit here on this flight, I'm doing the math again.
Not just the ranking points.
The dollars.
The training. The travel. The qualification events ahead. The sacrifices my family and I will have to make if I'm going to give this campaign a legitimate shot.
I've invested an enormous amount in getting this far, and the next chapter will demand even more.
I can't continue to fund this campaign entirely on my own.
That's a difficult thing to admit, particularly for someone who's spent most of her adult life figuring out how to make things happen herself.
But this weekend gave me something important.
Evidence that the investment is working.
And perhaps the realization that if I'm serious about seeing how far I can go, I need to get equally serious about building the support system that will make it possible.
Somewhere between here and home
I keep thinking about the woman I was two years ago.
She wasn't booking flights to race sailboats in New York. She wasn't preparing for Olympic qualification events. She wasn't putting herself out there, publicly and imperfectly, to see what might still be possible.
She was busy living the life she'd built.
A good life, by almost every measure.
But there was a part of her that had gone quiet.
I think about how much has changed since I decided to listen to that part of myself again.
And today, somewhere above the clouds, I get to celebrate something.
Not because I've arrived.
Not because sixth place is the ultimate goal.
But because the woman who wondered whether she could ever be competitive again just finished sixth at a championship regatta.
And she's getting faster.
I don't know exactly how the next chapter will unfold. There are difficult decisions ahead, and some very real challenges to solve.
But for now, I'm going to allow myself to be proud of this one.
The progress is showing.
And I'm not done yet.
Second Wind is my journey back to competitive sailing and toward the LA28 Olympic Games. If you'd like to help keep this campaign moving forward, you can support my journey through the Skiff Sailing Foundation. Every contribution helps get me to the next starting line.
