The eight girls making up the yet-to-be-named crew that is set to become the youngest, all-female team to compete in the Newport to Bermuda race hatched their plan at the Bristol House of Pizza.

“We were at BHOP with Richard,” said Gigi Fischer, of Bristol.

“The Ida Lewis race got canceled and we had to take the boats back to Barrington safe harbor because there was going to be a big storm,” said Milla Clark. “And so then we went to get dinner because this was like our end of the summer, kind of our last hurrah sailing these boats. So we put the boats away and then we went to get dinner at the BHOP. Someone suggested as a joke that Newport to Bermuda was our next step. And Richard said ‘Yeah, that’s totally doable.’ Then that was in our heads.”

To back up a moment, seven of the eight girls on this crew are members of the Lincoln School sailing team, and they train at the Bristol Yacht Club under coach Richard Feeny, who is also a resident of Bristol. This last summer, he ran a two-month intensive in which he coached the crew in big boat racing skills on board a 33-foot Beneteau Figaro. Thus, the end of summer BHOP dinner.

They are: Phoebe Lee of Edgewood, grade 12; Milla Clark of Marshfield, Mass., grade 11; Elizabeth Gardner of Newport, grade 11; Olivia Vincent of Providence and Pawtucket, grade 10, Gigi Fischer of Bristol, grade 10; Sophia Comiskey of Tiverton, grade 12; Sarah Wilme of Portsmouth, a student in the IRYS boatbuilding program; and Callie Dawson of Edgewood, grade 11.

“I had previously been involved with the Figaro fleet down in New York when I was in college,” said Sarah Wilme, the most senior member of this young crew. “That's how I ended up reaching out to Richard. These Figaros are used to train younger people distance racing on boats that have really, really light loads so that they're easier to start out with without much risk.”

The girls spent their summer sailing around Block Island and off Montauk. Summer ended, but their passion for this new-to-them niche of their sport.

They logged miles while learning a lot of offshore skills going out every weekend in the summer — they even did some boat deliveries in the fall. By October, they had sailed about 2000 nautical miles as a team. The original program was only six weeks, but they just kept building off of it.

After the seed was planted, Gigi reached out to the chairman of the Newport to Bermuda race, who at first thought they would be the first all-female crew (actually there was one other, back in 1992). It was confirmed, however, that they would be the youngest. They then reached out to Oakcliff, a nonprofit sailing center in New York. Oakcliff’s Executive Director Dawn Riley is a legend in the sport — the first woman to manage an America’s Cup team, she has raced on four Cup and two Ocean Race (formerly Whitbread) teams.

Oakcliff will be providing the girls with a Farr 40 for the race, training leading up to the June event, and two coaches. They will do some racing in May, but report to Oakcliff on June 7 — hours after the two seniors in the group, Phoebe and Sophia, receive their diplomas.

They have a lot of work to do between now and then, and it’s not all training. They need to come up with a name, and develop a social media presence so their fans (and parents!) can follow their progress. And this effort is not inexpensive. The girls need to fundraise to pay for their charter and training; if you are interested in helping out, please visit Oakcliffsailing.org and select Lincoln Team on their donation page.

The girls anticipate the Newport to Bermuda race will take about 4-5 days to complete, but they claim they are not nervous — except perhaps at the prospect of spending so much time together on the relatively small boat.

“Personally I'm so excited,” said Milla. “I am not nervous about the race itself, just that I might get sick of being on the boat.”

“We’re doing safety training and we've already done like safety for offshore sailing so I think once we have that under our belts we will be prepared, said Sophia.

“I think it's comforting to know your crew and I think we all know each other so well and we trust each other so much,” said Sarah. “Of course we don't want to be messing up during the race but if we mess up on something there's no embarrassment factor, there's always someone to step in and help out. I feel like we all just work really well together.”