A Q&A with Nicole Breault about women’s match racing in the USA

by David Schmidt, Sail-World USA Editor on 17 Apr 2017 When it comes to women’s match racing, Nicole Breault (USA) has proudly won more than most sailors’ share of trophies, including first-place finishes at the 2015 U.S. Women’s Match Racing Championships, the 2015 ISAF Nations Cup, and the 2015 Mayors Cup. As skipper of her Vela Racing program, Breault’s 2016 accomplishments include a third-place finish at the California Dreamin’ Series, a second-place finish at the U.S. Match Racing Championship Qualifier, a second (consecutive) first-place finish at the U.S. Women’s Match Racing Championship, and a fifth-place finish at the Carlos Aguilar Match Race regatta. And that’s to say nothing of her J/105 sailing, her strong collegiate record, her mastery of the Racing Rules of Sailing, her Olympic campaigns, or her overseas sailing.

Breault, 45, originally hails from Old Lyme, Connecticut, and grew up sailing at the Niantic Bay Yacht Club (where her parents still maintain their membership). She went to school at Yale University (Class of 1994 with a B.A. in American Studies), which has graduated many of the top sailors of the modern era, including Steve Benjamin, Jonathan McKee, Peter Isler, J.J. Fetter, and Breault’s sailing and match-racing mentor, Dave Perry. [Editor's Note: In the interest of full editorial disclosure, I have personally known Perry since the seventh grade when he was my soccer coach, and I also count him as a great role model in sailing and life.]

Like Perry, Breault has strong teaching credentials as a secondary-school history teacher and coach (soccer, again much like Perry) in Connecticut before relocating to the San Francisco area, where she has become deeply involved with the J/105 fleet.

I caught up with Breault to learn more about the state of women’s match racing in the USA, and to also hear more about her upcoming Clinegatta, which is set to unfurl on the waters of San Francisco Bay this July, and which could be a great resource for other talented female sailors who are looking to try their hand at match racing.

How did you get involved with match racing? Junior sailing? College?
In 2007-08 I took a sabbatical from teaching to play around in 470s and sail the last single event Trials for the US team going to Beijing. This brought me back into the sailing scene around the time women's match racing was named an event for the London Games in 2012. With no agenda but trying something new, I was invited by my friend Jo Ann Fisher to race the Sundance Cup in Texas that following spring as main trimmer and to help, as much as a novice match racer can, with tactics. We had a blast and then together sailed the Santa Maria Cup a few months later. With lots of aspiring women jumping into match racing, the opportunities to go racing kept coming. I enjoyed learning the new game while getting to know a whole bunch of great sailors who had emerged during the years I was focusing on my career.

Do you have a preference between high-level match racing and fleet racing (say at a world championship)? Can you explain?
No real preference. I like both! But they are definitely different. Match racing challenges teams to adapt quickly to given boat designs at different venues. The racing is a sprint of tactics and boat handling to gain control over the other boat in the match. At a high level, most people know the plays and it becomes a test of timing and execution and minimizing mistakes. Championship level fleet racing requires a big investment in making your boat a speed machine and perfecting your settings for given conditions. And while boat-on-boat tactics is a very important part of the game, they are part of the much bigger challenge of fleet management and getting yourself free to sail the race course according to your best planned strategy.

Did you find it hard to adjust, culturally, to the sailing scene on the West Coast, or do you travel enough with your sailing that you’re basically racing against the same people?
The sailing scene helped me bridge whatever cultural gap exists between [the] East and West [Coasts]... you know, sailors are sailors, and yes, in my travels I do get to see a lot of familiar faces. On the other hand, I get a big, bad, blue vibe from the Pacific Ocean still! San Francisco Bay is notoriously windy and I had some tough lessons about playing the currents and not just tacking on headers or away from bad lanes! I've made a lot of new friends on the West Coast and I'm glad I get opportunities to go back East to race and see old friends... not to forget those fine friends in the middle.

What’s your attraction to J/105s, rather than some of the higher-profile sport boat classes (Melges 20, Melges 24, J/70, Vipers, Melges 32, et al?)? Or, do you race in those classes, too?
I married into the J/105 class! My husband Bruce Stone, a long-time member of Fleet 1 in San Francisco, introduced me to the class. That fleet remains very healthy with 20+ boats on the starting line for regular season regattas and even the midwinters. Those other classes definitely catch my eye, and I'm sure their performance aspects would be fun out on the Bay. But when we pop a J/105 up on a plane in 25-30 knots and blast by Alcatraz, it's cool enough.

Do you also enjoy offshore sailing, or do you prefer shorter-course regatta sailing?
Right now I am on St. Barths, racing Les Voiles, and it is pretty amazing! But I consider myself an inshore one-design sailor at heart.

Can you tell me about the Clinegatta? Who is it aimed at, who can attend, and what kinds of skills will they learn?
The [San Francisco] Bay Women's Match Race Clinegatta is a three-day introduction to match racing for experienced sailors. Since the 2012 London Games and the discontinuation of women's match racing as an Olympic event, participation has suffered. Here in the U.S., most of the match racing women can do is in open events, and for a couple of years there has really only been one women's event, the U.S. Women's Match Racing Championship. We put this Clinegatta together as an effort to get more female sailors introduced to the discipline and perhaps hook them into developing their own programs.

On day one we are going to focus on boathandling, specific to match racing, in the J/22. We want the challenges of sailing the boat to be addressed right away, so that they don't stand in the way of learning the tactics of match racing. All day Saturday we focus on match racing, and Sunday we will run a single round-robin Grade 5 regatta.

[Editor’s Note: the San Francisco Bay Women’s Match Race Clinegatta will unfurl from July 7-9, 2017; more information can be found at under the Racing page at www.stfyc.com and navigating to the July events page.]

Where do you see the future of women’s match racing going in the USA? What about internationally?
I would like to see women's match racing make a comeback at the grassroots level in the U.S. With enough demand, we might be able to create events like the former Sundance Cup, Osprey Cup and [the] Santa Maria Cup to foster development and feed a stronger field of competitors into the U.S. Match Racing Qualifier Series. Then we would see some serious action at the U.S. Women's Match Race Championship!

On the International front, Liz Baylis and WIMRA [Ed Note: WIMRA is the Women’s International Match Racing Association] are doing a great job with the WIM Series. I competed in two of the WIM Series events last year, the Buddy Melges/World Championship in Sheboygan, [WI,] and the Carlos Aguilar [Match Race] on St. Thomas, and [I] got my fair share of competition. I hope the sailors on that circuit stick around for a while and I get a chance to race them again.