Tennis has Venus and Serena. Acting’s got Lynn and Vanessa. And junior sailing has Rebecca and Emily. In case you’ve been living in a cave, or far from coastal waters, that would be the Williams sisters, the British Redgraves, and the homegrown Dellenbaughs.
At sixteen, Emily is two years younger than Becca, as she’s known, and in the past three years, they have snagged either first place or “Top Girl” honors in every important junior sailing event from Florida to Gdynia, Poland. Both are members of the U.S. National Youth Sailing Team and have been named as national Jobson Junior All-Stars, an impressive one-two punch. When they compete against each other in two-handed boats, it’s common for them to finish first and second, which the boys will justify by saying, “Well, yeah, they’re the Dellenbaughs.” It’s also common for junior sailing events to award a “Top Girl” prize. But after one big regatta, where Becca and Emily finished first and second and another all-girl boat placed third, one spectator quipped, “Are they going to give out a ‘Top Boy’ trophy?”
When the Dellenbaughs race, people take notice. You would expect them to be well-known here on their home turf, but their reputations transcend local waters. In fact, a prospective eighteen-year-old instructor for the junior program at their base, the Pequot Yacht Club in Southport, said one of the reasons he wanted to work there was because “that’s where the Dellenbaughs come from.”
Curled up on a sofa in the living room of their Colonial, barn-style Easton home, the girls look like they could have just trooped home from any high school in America. Their clean-cut good looks don’t require makeup. They are dressed similarly, in hoodies (Becca in baby blue, Emily in pink) and sweatpants, their long hair pulled back in ponytails. But a glance around the well-appointed, comfortable home reveals hints of other lives being led. Photos of the girls in boats, the billowing sails of regatta fleets, nautical-themed art and one supersized silver trophy on a side table clearly all bespeak excellence. Pokey, the family’s four-year-old beagle who’s bunked down at the girls’ feet, doesn’t have a clue or a care what skilled sailors’ hands reach down to pet her head.
Emily curls and slouches and taps her feet; she fidgets like a kid who would rather be letting out sails or kicking a soccer ball. Becca, on the other hand, sits upright and poised, hands folded over her crossed legs. She’s been called willowy, and it’s a perfect word for the graceful young woman preparing to enter Dartmouth this fall. Several inches shorter and a couple of years younger than her sister, Emily has at least as much intensity as her sister. As the girls discuss sailing, their goals and their lives, they speak one language to an outsider and a different one to each other — they share a running commentary and inside jokes and giggle like sisters.
When Becca says she’s looking forward to taking her place on the Dartmouth sailing team this fall, Emily pipes up that she would like to go to Dartmouth, too. Becca shoots her a look that only an older sister can give and shakes her head. “Dartmouth is my school,” she says.
“Yeah, well, I like the name,” says Emily.
There’s a pause as they attempt a stare-down, but both girls erupt with laughter. Sweet and soft-spoken, intelligent and polite, can these really be two of the fiercest competitors in junior sailing today?