Mighty Mary: Rock the Boat

There is a story from the world of sailing that deserves to be told, and this September it is finally hitting the big screen.

Mighty Mary is a documentary about the very first all-women's sailing crew to contend for the famed America's Cup in 1995. It is a story that has been waiting thirty years for its moment.

It started in March 1994 when Bill Koch, fresh off his 1992 America's Cup victory, made a bold decision. He would field an all-women's crew for the 1995 defense. The announcement drew over 600 applicants. From those, 120 were tested on the water. Thirty made the final cut. At the helm was Dawn Riley, a veteran of Koch's winning 1992 campaign and fresh off skippering an all-women's entry in the grueling 1993-94 Whitbread Round the World Race. The team included Olympic sailors, Olympic rowers, world champions, and collegiate champions. There was a deaf sailor, a Native Hawaiian sailor, and the first African American to ever win an America's Cup race. 

Widely dismissed at the time as a publicity stunt, Mighty Mary proved formidable on the water, advancing to the final of the 1995 Citizen Cup defender trials after a series of victories over Dennis Conner's Stars & Stripes. They had nearly 40 boat lengths on Conner heading into the final leg. What happened next and the backroom deal that followed is what makes this story one of the most compelling in sailing history. You will have to watch the film to get the full picture. 

Director Mary Mazzio, herself a Georgetown Law graduate and former Olympic rower who competed for the United States in the 1992 Olympics, said this project had been in her mind since the 1990s. "I remember the story well. I was on the 1992 Olympic rowing team, and a number of my teammates went and joined the Mighty Mary team as grinders. I remember the twists and turns of that time, and I remember thinking to myself how that was a story that needed to be told." 

Narrated by Hugh Jackman and Elizabeth Banks, Mighty Mary opens in select AMC Theatres nationwide on September 11, 2026. Check out the trailer and bring a fellow sailor or someone who has never sailed a day in their life. Either way, they will leave thinking.

For Discussion:

Tracy Edwards from SV Maiden was told she would never make it to the start line. The women of Mighty Mary were called a publicity stunt before they ever touched a halyard. Both crews went out and proved the doubters wrong and yet here we are, decades later, still having versions of the same conversation.

So where do we actually stand? Not in theory, but out here, on our water, in our club. Are we the kind of community where a woman can walk up to a boat and be seen as a sailor first? Where she gets handed the helm, not the galley? Where her voice in a tactical discussion carries the same weight as anyone else's?

Because sometimes it is not the big, obvious moments. Sometimes it is the small ones, the assumptions made before someone speaks, the comments that seem harmless, the roles that just seem to default a certain way without anyone noticing.

Have you seen it? Have you felt it? And what do we do about it, not someday, but now?

Come ready for an honest conversation.