Michael Whitfield

Michael started sailing before he was walking and started racing his “Sabot” at the age of eight. He went on to race Flying Juniors, 420s, Enterprises and Fireballs in the local yacht club Junior's Program. He has had extensive keelboat racing experience in Dragons, Six Meters, ¼ Ton, ½ Ton, ¾ Ton, 1 Ton and 2 Tonners throughout the seventies and early eighties.

He has raced in a number of World, Gold Cup, North American and Regional Championships. Most notably, the Six Meter Worlds, the Dragon Gold Cup, the ½ Ton North Americans and the J/24 Worlds. In 1980 Michael won the Pacific Northwest Catalina 22 Championship as tactician, which was held on Lake Washington. In 1981 he skippered a Ranger 22 to victory at the “Camellia Cup” on Folsom Lake. In 1984 he skippered a Holder 20 to third place at the Nationals held on Huntington Lake.

He first started racing J/24's on San Francisco Bay in the fall of 1985 and has been at it ever since. In 2002 he skippered a local J/24 “Phantom” for two seasons and was guest driver on a couple of the local Fleet 17 boats. Michael has been at the helm of “TMC Racing” for the majority of races since the program’s inception in April of 2004.

Michael is the COO of Touchstone Management Consultants, Inc. and has been responsible for the company’s day-to-day operations since August of 2002. For the five years prior to joining TMC Michael delivered organizational development, leadership, communications & business development training services to Andersen Consulting (Accenture) practices in the U.S., Great Britain and Europe. He has also project managed an IT outsourcing contract with Accenture.

With a 22-year IT career in business development and project management, Michael has worked for a small cadre of technology-based firms, ranging from AST Computers, Samsung Information Systems and LANQuest.

 

Lulu Yang

Lulu has been sailing for almost fifteen years and has been racing for the last ten. She was skipper trained and certified by OCSC Sailing in Berkeley and has a broad base of experience in sailing J/24s and charter boats up to forty feet. Lulu has raced in numerous Berkeley Yacht Club Friday Night races, of which many she has skippered. She also skippers in a variety of Women’s Skipper races at both Berkeley and Island Yacht Clubs. In 2007, while Michael was on medical leave from the program, Lulu skippered "TMC Racing" in both the J-Fest and Elite Keel Regattas. With finishes of 8th, 6th, 6th, 5th, 4th, 4th, 2nd and 2nd, Lulu ensured that “TMC Racing” maintained a competitive position in the overall Fleet 17 Championship Series. In 2007 the team finished in 2nd place.

Lulu founded Touchstone Management Consultants, Inc. in 2002 and has been the CEO and President since its inception. Lulu delivers high-end strategy implementation consulting services to global energy companies and to deliver those services she travels all over the globe.

Prior to TMC, Lulu was the Vice President of Professional Services for XUMA Corporation, a B2B eCommerce integration services firm, located in San Francisco, California. She delivered 92% reference-able accounts during her tenure, which was at less than 20% prior to her arrival. As part of the executive team, her focus on client satisfaction through developing strong cross-functional teams contributed to two successful rounds of funding.

Prior to that, Lulu was the Director of Management & Leadership Training for the Worldwide Consulting Services Group at Oracle Corporation. Lulu traveled globally delivering senior level practice management training. In addition, she managed the curriculum development and global deployment of training programs for Oracle, resulting in the first "solutions-approach" for selling Oracle products and consulting services.

For 12 years, Lulu worked in the San Francisco, London and Chicago offices of Arthur Andersen, LLP. As the Regional Director of Operations, she managed the U.S. Western Region Consulting Practice, which included 200 consultants in 5 service lines with revenues of $60 million annually. She specialized in financial consulting, litigation & environmental consulting and organizational development consulting prior to her operations role.

 

Eamon O’Byrne

Eamon received his initial sail training from the famous French sailing institution "Glennon" where he sailed the Brittany coast. He carried his love of sailing back home to Ireland where he sailed both high-performance dinghies and classic fishing skiffs. Upon arriving in San Francisco in the mid-nineties he joined the staff at OCSC Sailing. He has been sailing and racing J/24s since 1995. Eamon plays the role of "utility-infielder" onboard "TMC Racing" where he is a top-flight trimmer. He is also trained-up and races onboard as a back-up middle-man and alternate mast person.

Eamon is currently the Executive Director of the San Francisco National Maritime Association where he guides this non-profit in its mission of the preservation of, and the public education about, the rich maritime tradition of San Francisco.

 

Lester Igo

Lester is TMC Racing's Iron Man, he’s crewed every position on the boat with the exception of driver. He started on the bow, has worked the mast and middle and now is our primary trimmer. Lester started his sailing over five years ago with OCSC and joined "TMC Racing" in the spring of 2005.

Lester is a Senior Development/Test Engineer at Infoblox, a Silicon Valley hardware appliance manufacturer. They manufacture and market dedicated DNS server technology.

 

Mike Arrajj

Mike has raced on San Francisco Bay for the past two decades where he has sailed and raced extensively on Express 27s and Islander 36s. He joined the "TMC Racing" team in the May of 2007 and is an integral part of the team's current level of success. His primary role is that of middle-man/tactician, where from the middle of the boat he strategically manages the team around the race course.

Mike is a senior psychiatric nurse for the City of San Francisco. He currently manages two of the City's care facilities.

 

Randall Rasicot

Randall joined "TMC Racing" in the fall of 2006, upon returning to the Bay Area after a work assignment in Thailand, he is back aboard. Randall originally trained up as a back-up middle-man for the team and beginning this year he has transitioned to the bow. Randall owned and raced his own Ranger 23 for over ten (10) years and has sailed extensively in San Francisco Bay.

Randall is a long-term IT professional with Chevron and is currently in charge of their global data center consolidation and upgrade efforts.

 

Mark Christensen

Mark has been racing J/24s in San Francisco Bay since 2004 and is a long-term member of the "On Belay" USA 1036 team. Don Taylor was kind enough to loan Mark to the "TMC Racing" team for the 2007 Mexican National and World Championships. Mark was also onboard with us for the 2007 Western Regional Championships in Ventura. Mark's training acumen and skills as a competitive tri-athlete and cyclist make him naturally suited as a bowman.

Mark transferred to the West Coast as a marketing professional with Lucent Technologies. He has recently joined Bright Idea, a San Francisco based IT start-up firm that delivers Idea and innovation management tools to the Fortune 500 marketplace. Mark is responsible for their day-to-day operations.

 

Sarah Mangan

Sarah sailed and raced with her family before joining the Cornell Sailing Team where she sailed, both dinghy and offshore (foredeck, pit, and headsail trim on J24s and Colgates). Additionally, Sarah raced on J/24s on the New Jersey Circuit and she has also done a lot of Lightning sailing on the east coast, including ACCs and NAs, as well as some Thistle sailing. She has been living in San Diego for the past 6 months and spent most sailing weekends on the bow of a Beneteau 40.7.

Sarah’s move from San Diego to San Francisco was instigated by a job related transfer. She works on the engineering team at Genentech in South San Francisco.

 

Chris Schaeffer

Chris started sailing in the Netherlands. He raced competitively on a Dutch Dragon before he moved to the United States. Chris joined OCSC as an instructor in 2003 and joined "TMC Racing" in the spring of 2004. He is a top flight middle man/tactician and sailed in that role at the 2007 World Championships.

Chris is an "EE" Engineer and spent many years working for Phillips in the Netherlands. His work with Phillips took him around the world and after working in China he landed at the Phillips Semi-Conductor Division in Silicon Valley. This division was spun-off and sold to NXP, which became NXP Semi-Conductor. Chris has recently joined an IT start-up firm in the valley where he is part of the core engineering and business management team.

 

Lou Anna Koehler

Lou Anna sailed extensively with her family as she was growing up. They sailed a Cal 20 all over the Pacific Northwest. She has raced both J/24's and Etchells extensively, including the Etchells’ Worlds in San Diego. Lou Anna has specialized in being on the bow and is exceptional in the job she does on the front of the boat. She’s been doing the bow on J/24's for over a decade.

Lou Anna is a Senior Sales Engineer working for Sun Micro Systems where she is a dedicated resource to Accenture working on systems design and implementation for delivery to Accenture's clients.

 

Andrew Kerr

Andrew Kerr is a world-class professional racing coach and has competed in J/24 World Championships in Wales, Italy, Netherlands and Mexico. He has sailed on the J/24 National and North American Championship winning teams nearly a dozen times. He is also six-time Santana 20 National Champion. He has raced everything from small dinghies to maxi-sleds.

After meeting Andrew at the 2004 J/24 North American Championship in Vancouver, B.C., he agreed to come aboard and act as TMC Racing's coach and advisor. Andrew started coaching the team in October 2004 and works with us on team development three to four weekends a year.

Andrew coaches a number of other teams around the country including; a J105 in Chicago, a J120 in Southern California and a Shields in New Jersey. He also presents performance and racing seminars for a variety of one design classes. In addition, he writes and contributes coaching related articles to Sailing World and a number of one design class association newsletters, magazines and web sites.

Andrew also works for North U, (a division of North sails), where he presents seminars all over the country on a variety of topics ranging from racing, racing rules and sail trim.

Over the years Andrew has worked as a head sailing coach at the Cold spring Harbor Beach Club, ( Long Island, NY, 1983), The Boston Sailing Center, Steve & Doris Colgate's Offshore Sailing School in Tortola, BVI and at the J-World Sailing Schools in San Diego, Annapolis, Key West, FL and Newport, RI. J-World Coronado's Jon Rogers, ( Jon is now the Junior program director for the Coronado YC) and Andrew were the original coaching staff for Larry Klein and his family as they started and established the J-World sailing School in San Diego in late 1987.