Yale Staff Member Sets a Course for Sailing Championships

Published: July 17, 2009

Eliza Cleveland and Robert Merrick, aboard their 16-foot catamaran “Pressure Drop,” will compete this summer in the North American and European Championships.

New Haven, Conn. — Yale staff member Eliza Cleveland hopes to sail through the summer more quickly than ever this year — at least, that's what she'll have to do in order to win the races in which she'll be competing.

Cleveland, director of external communications for Yale's Peabody Museum, and Olympic silver medalist Robert Merrick finished the 2008 sailing season ranked first in North America in the Hobie Cat class. This year, they've set their sights high, hoping to repeat their success at the North American Championships in July and the European Championships in August.

A 1994 graduate of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Sciences, Cleveland started racing in 2001 as a crew member, with Merrick at the helm. That was a year after Merrick won the silver medal in the two-man 470 sailing class at the Summer Olympic Games in Sidney, Australia.

Cleveland and Merrick race in a speedy two-person 16-foot double-hulled catamaran, dubbed Pressure Drop. (Hobie Cat is a specific class of catamarans of different lengths and does not compete in the Olympics.) They won five of eight Hobie Cat regattas and finished third in that class — behind teams from Puerto Rico and Guatemala — in the North American Championship in September at Clear Lake, Iowa. They hope for another top-three finish at this year's North Americans July 20-24 in Kingston, Ontario. It was the fifth time they had competed in the North Americans. In 2007 they won four regattas.

"We've gotten better over the years as we came to understand the nuances of the boat and each other," says Cleveland.

Their win had qualified them for the bi-annual Hobie Cat World Championship that had been set to take place in Italy in October. Because the poor global economic situation forced cancellation of those races, they will compete instead in the European Championship Aug. 3-8 at Lake Como, Italy.

"We expect to race against about 80 boats, and we hope to finish in the top 10. The French are always strong contenders," Cleveland says. "Lake sailing is different from ocean sailing since the winds are shiftier on lakes."

International racing is not new for Cleveland and Merrick. They were the first American finisher and fifth overall of eight boats at the 2007 Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. They gained the right to compete there by winning the Pan Am qualifier in 2006 in Kingston, Rhode Island. The Pan Ams take place every four years at a location in North, Central or South America.

Cleveland and Merrick can occasionally be seen practicing in local waters in Pressure Drop, which they transport by trailer to races once or twice a month from May to September. While the closest race is in Sandy Hook, New Jersey, just south of New York City, they have hauled the boat as far as Kingston, Ontario. They also drove it to Clear Lake but had it shipped to Rio de Janeiro.

"It's something that really gets into your blood," Cleveland says of the hobby. "We love it."

— By Bill McDonald, Yale Peabody Museum

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