From a Hobie to offshore racing

After only racing since 2019, skipper Hattie Warwick-Smith of Lewes took part in the 470-nautical mile Annapolis to Newport Race in early June.

She's come a long way from sailing on her Hobie Cat.

Warwick-Smith and her crew of four started the race in her 34-foot Tartan 34C sailboat Iris on June 4 and finished at 1 a.m. June 9 in Rhode Island, second to last in the 82-boat race sponsored by Annapolis Yacht Club.

Crew members included local sailors Nate Landis, Josh Getka, Jason Subach and Elizabeth Hinkle.

“We were the smallest and slowest boat in the fleet, and I didn't think we'd beat anybody,” she said. “Finishing when we did is faster than I anticipated.”

She purchased Iris in 2018 and has been involved in Lewes Yacht Club sailing ever since. Warwick-Smith, who is Dogfish Head Craft Brewing Co. Delaware site leader and senior director of finance at Boston Beer Co., has been a member of the club since 2006. She has worked at Dogfish since 2016.

To get to Annapolis, Warwick-Smith sailed solo from Lewes, through the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal into Chesapeake Bay. She docked at Eastport Yacht Club in Annapolis two days prior to the start of the race where she met up with her crew.

The first leg of the 38th biennial race was south on Chesapeake Bay, then around Cape Charles and north in the Atlantic Ocean to Rhode Island.

Because Warwick-Smith has some offshore sailing training, she was responsible for all navigation and weather-routing, which was a first for her. Weather-routing software is used by skippers and captains to determine the best route based on current weather, forecast weather and ocean currents. At one point, they sailed as far as 80 miles offshore to catch favorable winds.

The skipper and her crew worked shifts to keep racing 24 hours a day, with two crew members on duty at all times. “And when they weren't on duty they had to sleep. Getting sleep was very important,” she said.

They had to stock provisions to last six days, and without refrigeration it was a challenge, she said. She said for the first 

two days they ate foods stored in coolers, but had to switch to nonperishables early on. Somehow, she managed to provide a home-cooked meal – some were prepared ahead of time – each day for the crew.

Although the weather gods smiled favorably on the race, she said the wind picked up about 20 hours from the finish and destroyed Iris' large spinnaker halyard. From there, they were limited to a small spinnaker and jib.

While this was the first major offshore race Warwick-Smith has skippered, she has logged many hours of training and sailing in local waters.

She attended offshore racing classes last summer at the Maryland Sailing School.

She stresses safety above everything else. “I take safety of the crew very seriously,” she said.

Warwick-Smith, who lives with husband Mike Goetz, an avid windsurfer, moved to Lewes in 2006 after moving to the United States in 2000. She left England in 1997 to live in Dubai.

She is not one to sit around and is already thinking about future races, including the Annapolis to Bermuda Race possibly in 2022.

Her ultimate sailing adventure? “I'd love to sail transatlantic to my home county of Hampshire in England,” she said. “But that's a lofty goal.”

Lewes' Carter also in race

Another sailor with strong Lewes ties also competed in the race. U.S. Naval Academy midshipman Frank Carter, son of Nick and Laurie Carter of Lewes, was part of the crew of Ranger, one of five Navy boats in the race.