Photo: Annika Phillips (dark orange sunglasses in the center of the boat) and team sailing on Puget Sound last fall.
Oregon State University kinesiology major Annika Phillips won a sailing world championship in Seattle last fall, and this September, she hopes to do it again in England.
The 21-year-old pre-med student has been sailing since she was 9 with the Willamette Sailing Club in Portland, and traveled to Puget Sound with her longtime team for the J/24 Worlds during OSU’s first full week of fall term classes.
The team of five childhood friends towed “Saltine” up I-5 and sailed to victory in the under-25 age division, beating out teams from all over the world, including Italy, Japan, Great Britain and Australia.
For Phillips, who’s been on sailboats since she was a baby, the joy comes from just being on the water, regardless of winning or losing.
“I’m a full-time student so I don’t get the opportunity to sail with my team that much,” she said. “I love being there. My head is free; it’s clear; there’s nothing on my mind except for being in the water, being outside on the boat, floating.”
Phillips, standing in the center, and the rest of the Saltine crew sailing on the Sound.
The 2024 J/24 Worlds was a weeklong competition, with 56 boats sailing in multiple races each day, Phillips explained. The courses varied from day to day, requiring the sailors to go around large floating “mark bots” across different distances and directions on the water, and they had to do it without cutting anyone off or colliding. First to cross the finish line gets one point, and 56th gets 56, so the teams with the lowest scores at the end of the week were the winners.
Phillips’ team motto is “Saltine sails clean,” with the pledge to never hit anyone even by accident, and they held to it — though they had a couple near misses, she said.
Her position on the boat is what’s called “pit” or “mast,” keeping the lines organized in the middle, shifting body weight as needed and helping set the spinnaker, the big colorful sail that can be added to the front of the craft to catch more wind.
The team qualified for Worlds based on their sailing resumes, which included many Thursday night races on the Columbia in Portland. They were fortunate to have sailed in Puget Sound several times before and to be more familiar with the currents and winds than many of their competitors were.
That won’t be the case when they head to Plymouth, England, in early September for the next world championship. Phillips hopes to get in weekly practice runs with her sailing team this summer, and they have engaged a coach with several world championships under his belt, Keith Whittemore, to talk them through different tactics and skills. Phillips said she also watches lots of videos about sailing technique when she’s not on the boat herself.
Going into the 2024 competition, the team’s only goal was to not finish last, she said.
“I think the thing that we really did well with is that we went into the competition thinking that we weren’t going to do very well,” she said. “We went into it kind of humble: We’re a youth team; we’ve never done this before. We were all super excited just to be there, so we didn’t care if we did badly.”
Those high spirits carried them through the week, but when they got to the final day and realized they were actually in first place, their nerves got “super spicy,” as Phillips put it.
“I was like ‘OK guys, don’t let it get to your head; we’re just going to sail.’ And everyone was silent, in their heads,” she recalled. “We were feeling really nervous because we’re like — ‘We’re the best youth team in the world,’ which is crazy.”
For their victory, the team members received seal figurines and a team plaque.
Phillips (in overalls) and the rest of the Saltine crew enjoy their winnings.
“Winning is awesome and it feels good, but personally, I just love sailing,” Phillips said. “It’s a great escape from everything else.”
That’s one of the main draws of the hobby, especially as she pursues her goal of working in emergency medicine.
“I want to work in the medical field, but when I think of working in the medical field, I think of an imbalance with career and life,” she said. “The medical system right now is not great. But I see a lot of people who are medical professionals who still love sailing and competing with their friends. The big thing for me is seeing people who are able to live their life and still do the things they love.”
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