600 Old Goats, but only 11 are women

By Peggy Walsh-Sarnecki

August 7, 2014 at 10:54 am Detroit

Barb Froelich-Stapleton became the 11th women to earn Old Goat status this summer. Photo by Sylvia Graham.

Barb Froelich-Stapleton became a proud Old Goat this summer. It takes 25 Bell’s Beer Bayview Mackinac Races to earn that name, so it’s no easy honor.

But what really surprised Barb was when she learned that out of the more than 580 officially recognized Old Goats, she was only the 11th woman.

Only 11 women? In this day and age? There’s hardly a boat in the Mackinac fleet that doesn’t have at least one woman on the crew.

“I didn’t realize it until I got up to the island,” Barb said. “I didn’t think there were that many but I went, ‘Wow, it’s so surreal.’ It just feels awesome!’”

There were moments in Barb’s early sailing career when it wasn’t easy being a woman on the crew. But she loved sailing and simply persevered — and found out women are accepted the same way men are, when they show they know their stuff.

“There have been times when people are like, ‘Eh..’ but people are accepting once you race with them,” Barb said. “It if doesn’t work with one boat, switch. There are lots of boats out there.”

No one’s sure why there are so few women Old Goats but the leading theory is that while a lot of women sail, family obligations tend to interrupt their sailing for several years.

“I think part of it that there were some women who started sailing and then they had families, the guys kept sailing and the women stayed with the children,” said Winnie Adams, who’s an Old Goat herself.

Barb agreed.

“I’m sure the whole thing is that raising a family, it’s really hard,” Barb said.

The good news is, it turns out Barb is in the forefront of an expected burst of female Old Goats coming in the near future.

“There’s no question about that,” Winnie said, and proceeded to tick of a half a dozen women off the top of her head who have 20 or more Mackinacs.

“There’s a lot of them that are in their 20th, 22nd Mackinac and have been racing. I expect that there will be a lot more in the next few years,” Winnie said. “In the next five years I guess it would explode in terms of the number of women.”

Barb’s advice to women is if they love sailing, stick with it.

“Just be passionate about it, ask questions and learn about it,” Barb said.

Mostly, she said, just go for it.

“Why not? We should just go for a lot of things in life!”