New Women's Single-Handed Trophy
at 6.15.2013
by Pam
 |
| Single-handed champion trophy and new women's trophy |
The Butterfly Single-Handed Nationals now has a new women's trophy.
The Fighting Lady Trophy is being donated by Pam, the 2012 winner of the “Top Woman Singlehanded Butterfly Championship” trophy. Both engraving plates were full and there was no room to add another name. It appeared to be the proper time to replace the trophy with a more suitable “Woman’s Single-Handed National Champion” trophy that can grow the same way as the overall National Champion trophy has grown over the years.
The Fighting Lady is a Butterfly that has remained in the same family and has a history that goes back to the mid-sixties. The boat sailed in her first nationals in 1973 at White Rock Lake in Dallas, TX. She was sailed by Robert Balboa Jr. and came in 28th.
A few years later she was moved to the shores of Lake Ray Hubbard in Forney, Texas where she was left outside and subjected to weather, kids and makeshift repairs until she struggled to even remain afloat. For 30+ years, Robert and Pam’s father kept her in the hopes that she would be raced again.
In 2008, Pam began sailing Butterflys and also ran into Robert’s best friend from his sailing days. Ben Miller from BM Boatworks in Kemah, TX had even sailed the boat a time or two as a kid and agreed to try to restore her to racing condition. The fiberglass was soft, the hull warped, and the floatation waterlogged but Ben worked his magic. Wanting to restore her to her original color, the closest color available was Interlux’s Fighting Lady Yellow. So the boat sort of named herself … and when she and Pam won the top woman trophy in 2012, almost 40 years after sailing in her first nationals which coincided with it being time to replace the trophy, she sort of named the trophy as well.
This trophy is dedicated to Robert D. Balboa, Sr. (1929-2003) and the Fighting Lady, both of whom never gave up the dream of racing again.
