While JJ Fetter (Isler) will tell you her greatest accomplishment as a sailor is winning the 1991 World Championships in Brisbane, Australia, listening to her talk, you realize a silver medal performance in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney is the most memorable.
But just barely.
A four-time Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year, Olympic silver and bronze medalist, three-time World Champion and double-figure National and European titlist, Fetter has had plenty of highlights.
There still is passion in her voice as she describes the unlikely second place finish in the Women’s 470 yachting competition in Sydney.
“Going in, I was coming off being retired with two kids and the highest finish we’d had (internationally) that year was a seventh,” said Fetter of she and her teammate, Pease Glaser.
“I was starting to question if maybe my best days were behind me and to make matters worse, we had very light wind so for two days, we were towed out into Sydney Harbor and waited in the hot sun for wind (which never came).”
On the second day, after the race had been called off, a light breeze picked up just as they were getting ready to be towed back, so Fetter and Glaser decided it would be more fun to sail in, the only crew to do so.
“The young teams couldn’t take the delays and conditions while we just decided to enjoy it,” she said. “When we came in, everyone else was in a terrible mood.”
But the facts were that the Americans had only an astronomical mathematical chance of winning the 470’s (that is craft 470 centimeters long—about 15 ½ feet). The seven boats behind the runaway front-running Australians, however, were tightly bunched.
After a slow start, Fetter and Glaser were resigned to a fourth place finish as the Israeli team blocked the Americans’ wind and there was little chance of breaking free. Then they got a break.
“On the fourth lap (of the six-lap race), the Israeli team was closing on the Ukrainians for second, so they decided to go for it and not be content with the bronze (third). They let us go and we went past both them and the Ukrainians before they realized what happened.”
Once in second, the veteran sailors weren’t about to make the same mistake as the Israelis, capturing that coveted silver.
Fetter’s description of her and crew Pam Healy’s Women’s 470 victory in Brisbane shows the wildly varying conditions in the sport.
“How difficult were the conditions?” she asks. “Think typhoon. We had to tie the boats down overnight, you weren’t just competing against the other sailors, you had to battle the conditions.
“It was only eight months before the Olympics and we beat everyone in a sport that, before then, was dominated by the Europeans. It wasn’t just that we won, it was the way we won in very difficult conditions.”
Unfortunately, in the Barcelona Olympics, a false start in the very first race forced Fetter and Healy, who had won the Olympic Trials, to come back from last place to finish third behind Spain and New Zealand.
For Fetter, who started sailing Sabots at age seven, sailing is a lifelong sport, like golf.
In those early days, she remembers that while she wanted to go horseback riding, she would be dragged along with her brother and sister to the harbor instead and soon horses were a distance memory.
“There is a sense of freedom sailing, like you are the master of the universe,” says Fetter, a graduate of The Bishop’s School and Yale University, where she became the first woman to win the New England Freshman Championships and earned All-America honors her senior year. “You can look up at the clouds or goof off as a kid and there is no coach or referee right there to stop you. It was an idyllic way to grow up but you learned quickly that while the sport engaged all the senses, sportsmanship was a major factor, especially if you planned to stay in the sport for a while.”
Fetter didn’t downplay the element of competition that allowed her to participate in America’s Cup, racing as the starting helmsman and tactician on the all-woman’s team that raced in the Citizen Cup Defender Series and in 2005, landed her a spot as the first woman in the Sailing World Hall of Fame.
Fetter currently is coaching the Francis Parker sailing team where her children, Marly (16) and Megan (11), go to school. She is also the co-author of “Sailing for Dummies” and a volunteer instructor at organized youth sailing clinics conducted by the California Interscholastic Sailing Association.
She doesn’t even try to hide her enthusiasm for coaching.
“The kids are just amazing,” says Fetter. “I tell them from the start to find out what it is about the sport you love and then to go after it. I plan to sail for the rest of my life.”
Almost as if to prove her point, when asked what she’d be doing later in the day of her interview, her eyes lighted up and her voice brightened as she answered, “I’m on the water today!”
