Interview by Mercedes Arnold

Maine Vibes Magazine: Can you introduce yourself, state your pronouns and introduce what you do?

Erica Beck Spencer: My name is Erica Beck Spencer, my pronouns are she/her, and I'm the skipper for the Sea Bags Maine Women's Sailing Team. I am a curriculum developer and an educator and truthfully I can't afford to do this sport, so I'm deeply grateful for the Sea Bags sponsorship, their partnership is amazing. It is our job to represent the company really well and to solicit people to donate their used sails to us for Sea Bags, they have kept over seven tons of sail material out of landfills, and given them a new life. We're honored to be a part of that mission and we couldn't be more grateful for their sponsorship and for truly believing in our team. It's been amazing.

MVM: That’s amazing that you’ve helped collect seven tons of sails over the years! So tell me about how the team formed. 

EBS: Jess Harris and I are the co-creators of the team. We have been sailing friends for a long time at the Portland Yacht Club in Falmouth and I went to a world championship in 2014 with a co-ed J24 tram from Maine, and I was doing the bow on that boat, I wasn't skippering. Then I went to the Worlds in Newport, RI and there were 74 teams competing. Out of 74 teams, there were only two female skippers in the whole event, I was pretty horrified by that. After the event, I put a post out on Facebook that in three years, in 2017, there was a Worlds in Toronto, and I wanted to be going to that championship with an all-women’s team, and I wanted to be skippering. So, I'm an educator and couldn't afford the boat and I had no idea how I was going to make that happen. Jess [Harris] saw that post and she's like, I want to help you make that happen. She and her dad bought the boat, and we went to worlds in 2017, that was our first Worlds as a team, and we’ve gotten to two so far, which is pretty awesome.

MVM: That’s incredible. How many people to a team? 

EBS: The teams that are racing are based on weight. We race with six women, most teams have five people racing. The Japanese team, sometimes there are seven because they're tiny. Together, we have to weigh under 882 pounds. I do see having six members racing as a benefit, that means six sets of people to do what you need to get done. Then we have 10-12 women that we call upon because not everyone can do every event. 

MVM: I read the age range for the team is pretty big, which is so cool! 

EBS: Our youngest team member started sailing with us when she was 14, and now she's in college, we had a woman who was 57 sailing and she’s now 60. This year, we had a 14-year-old sail with us and my daughter, Anica, who is 15. She'll be racing with me for the first time at the Downeast Regatta. She sailed local stuff with me, but to have a regatta with 27 boats is pretty exciting. That's one thing that's really great about sailing and the J 24 class; there are many teams across the world who sail multigenerational teams, and most fathers sail with their kids, but it's pretty awesome to be sailing with my daughter. 

MVM: I can’t wait to see the team in action! Where are the teammates coming from? 

EBS: For the Downeast Regatta, Laura Graham is coming from California, Hillary Keimig is coming from Rhode Island, and the other four of us, myself, my daughter Anica Spencer, Emily Carville, and Jess Harris are from Portland.

MVM: I love that you have two coming from out of state to race here in Maine. So, I understand that sailing and racing for the team isn’t your full-time job, and you mentioned that you are an educator. What are you an educator of? 

EBS: I have worked for UC Berkeley for 14 years and I am a curriculum developer of preschool through eighth-grade science. It’s a lot of active learning, hands-on. That's how I know, Tamara [Whitmore] through my work, and it’s really about outdoor education and connecting kids to the natural world. 

MVM: I absolutely love seeing how kids connect with the outdoors and being in nature. With all of you working, how do you find time to practice sailing together as a team? It sounds like the strategy is important and being able to work together as a unit, how do you get that vibe going? 

EBS: Unfortunately, we don’t get to practice much. We go to the North Americans at the end of October in Annapolis. The event is Friday-Sunday, we arrive on Wednesday to rig and get the boat measured and weigh ourselves. Hopefully, we can practice together on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon and then race. We practice a few days before a race, but most of us have sailed together for four or five years. 

Even though we don’t get to practice much, we practice with other teams. I think that makes us better when we come back together. Hillary, our techtician, is down in Newport and she sails with some of the best sailors in the world. All of us are constantly striving to get better. Even when we’re on the water, we talk about what we can improve. After racing, we talk to all the professional sailors and see what we could have done differently. The pros who we race against are constantly sharing things we could do, they are so giving of their information. Over the years we’ve gotten better and better, so it’s great. 

MVM: I can’t imagine how tuned into each other you are to be successful. 

EBS: That's just it, you said that so well. Some of the teams who will be in the top 10 in the country at a big event, they've sailed together for 10 years and it's such a unique relationship being teammates on a sailboat because you work so hard and you're all exhausted by the end of the day and a little bit dehydrated and yet you stay calm, you stay focused together. Occasionally tensions get high and you have to be able to shake that off and go on. It's incredibly complex, but you spend so much time together. It’s intense, we can’t get together every week, but when we are together, we sleep in the same homes, we travel together, we set up and take apart the boat together and then race. We are very supportive of each other as teammates and cheer each other on, and understand that mistakes happen to everyone. It is tough not to get upset when mistakes happen, but everyone is trying their hardest, so again it’s intense. 

MVM: It sounds like it, but also sounds like you all have a really supportive team dynamic. What about the other team members who aren’t racing with you, do they come and support from another boat? 

EBS: That’s a good question. That doesn’t happen often, and if they can’t come it’s because they have an obligation with family or whatnot. 

MVM: How many hours a week do you get on the water? 

EBS: It depends. In the summertime locally we race every Wednesday on a J 24. I think next year I'm going to try to do a challenge to be sailing on the water for 100 days out of the year. That's a lot of time on the water when you're from Maine, but if you live in Florida that's easy to do because the weather and water are always conducive to sailing. 

MVM: How has this year’s season been going for the team? 

EBS: Unfortunately, due to flight issues, we had to cancel one event. We did start the year sailing in J 70s, which is a different kind of boat down in Florida. That was exciting. It was an initiative that started to try and equalized gender opportunities on the water. The J70 classes are mostly sailed by men, this mixed plus division was created to help combat that. 

MVM: I read that you started sailing with your dad, is that correct? 

EBS: He totally was the one who got me into it. We used to sail together on a Sunfish. I would say we’d have to beat the person in front of us and then eventually I kicked him off the boat and started sailing by myself. He’s been such a great supporter of my sailing, he still comes to the races and cheers us on. 

MVM: And now he gets to see his granddaughter out there! So, talking about sustainability and learning new ways to protect our environment is important to us. Can you talk about why it’s important for people to care about the sail recycle program with Sea Bags? What’s the impact of recycling them? 

EBS: Most people who are sailors care deeply about the ocean and the health of our planet. Our team is very conscious, we have an electric engine when most sailboats have a gas-powered engine. We think about how we package our lunches and try to use as little plastic as possible. With the products we use to clean our boats, we try to use ones that are biodegradable and not going to harm our oceans. As a team, we care deeply about the planet and, and our impact. 

As far as keeping sails out of landfills, keeping anything out of landfills is part of our mission and sailors love their sails, we spend a lot of money on them, and we sometimes hate to let go of them even though they've lived past their life of being a viable material to keep you going fast. It feels better to donate them to Sea Bags so they can make bags out of them.  If somebody donates to our team, they can get a team bag in exchange for their donation, and that feels nice to support our team and keep sails out of landfills, and they get a great bag, so it's a win-win. 

MVM: That’s great, I appreciate that the team and Sea Bags are thinking about how to be more sustainable and eco-friendly and doing your part to educate others on keeping sails out of landfills. So, sailing is an expensive sport, and a lot of the time, it’s going to be out of most people’s budgets. It’s predominantly white and male participants. Do you know of any programs in Maine that help make sailing more accessible to people? 

EBS: Totally. We just raised close to $7,000 for Sail Maine towards their programs. There are also community sailing centers around the country, and college sailing is as cheap as it can get, that’s where I really became the racer I am today, that was the foundation for me. I didn’t have a junior program before that. But Sail Maine is a great resource here in Maine. They have scholarships available to get people out sailing. 

MVM: Are sailing programs becoming more diverse? 

EBS: They are slowly. Traditionally it’s a white, male, wealthy sport, so it’s hard to break through that. Again, community sailing centers make it more accessible, they do outreach at school which is important, and STEM activities to introduce the program to kids in public schools. 

MVM: Hopefully with more amazing people like you and your teammates out there and Sail Maine creating accessible programs, the sport can begin to evolve. So, I’m curious, do you have any businesses that you’d like to shout out? 

EBS: Definitely Beth Greenlaw, the owner of Sea Bags, she is amazing. 

MVM: You’ve opened my eyes to a whole other world, this world of sailing. 

EBS: I do want to say, before I started skippering and starting this team with Jess, I would look at other all-women’s teams and I would be like, I can do this. Seeing them out there helped me build my confidence, and I'm really hoping that we can do that for other people. Having an all-women’s sailing team is way better and bigger than what we think it is. The men we race against, are powerful people in the world. Anytime we can beat them or impress them, I feel like we're breaking down barriers and who knows how big it is or how deep it goes, but I think it's way bigger than sailing. The sailing part is really important to being that model and having other younger people or even older people to say look, they're doing it, I can do it, too, and that s really important.

MVM: Yeah absolutely, representation matters. How many women skippers are there now? 

EBS: There is a handful across the country. I'd say overall, it's like 1/10 of all the skippers are women. It’s not enough, but I’m hopeful there will be more. 

MVM: Anything else that you want to share before we part!? 

EBS: I love my team! It's amazing when you're sailing with people that you've sailed together with regularly, over many years, you just get better and better. To your point about communication, we actually have to say less because we trust each other to do each person's own job on the boat. I think after so many years of sailing together we're really gelling and it's going to be exciting to see what we can do.

Thank you, Erica, for taking the time to talk with Maine Vibes Magazine!

Web: https://www.seabagssailingteam.com/team

Instagram: @seabagssailingteam

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