Final Results

Needing simply to not shoot themselves in the foot to ensure victory in the Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup, the San Diego Yacht Club dominated the windy final race to stamp their authority on the eighth edition of the world’s premiere Corinthian regatta.

Led by 34-year-old helmsman Tyler Sinks, San Diego’s victory in the final race was their only top-four finish of the regatta and gave them the low score of 43 points, good for an 11-point win over first-time entrant Corinthian Yacht Club of Marblehead, Mass. The Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron placed third with 55 points for its best result in three attempts. Rounding out the top five were New York Yacht Club, the winner of the inaugural Invitational Cup in 2009 with 62 points, and Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, with 66 points, for its best finish in seven attempts.

Joining Sinks, the 2015 team racing world champion, in the crew were Carissa Crawford, Cameron Hutcheson, Nick Martin (headsail trimmer), Rick Merriman (main trimmer), Al Pleskus, Adam Roberts (tactician), Robert Savoie and Lucy Wallace.

The San Diego crew has many championships to its résumé and is a tight-knit group that goes back to youth sailing days. Sinks, Hutcheson and Martin have sailed the past two Invitational Cups and were part of the crew that won the 2018 Resolute Cup, which qualified San Diego for the 2019 Invitational Cup. Sinks and Wallace raced together at Boston College. Roberts and Martin put forth a 470 campaign for the 2012 Olympics. Merriman is something of an outlier, but he’s almost an essential ingredient if you’re aiming to win the Invitational Cup. This is the fourth time he’s won the Rolex NYYC Invitational Cup (previously 2009, ’17, ’21) and he’s the only sailor to win the Corinthian championship more than twice.

“Winning feels awesome,” said Sinks, a three-time collegiate All-American. “This is my third time doing this. We were second the first time, barely missed top spot, and came back two years ago and got third, so we felt there was one podium spot left to grab, and we got it.”

“It’s totally surreal. To win on a big breeze day, you can’t write that fairy tale script any better. We’re on cloud nine right now,” said Roberts, who was a four-time collegiate All-American. “We couldn’t be more thankful to get to sail together in such a premiere event with such amazing sailors all around us. To bring it all together is so much more meaningful for us.”

Nineteen teams from 14 countries competed in the eighth Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup, a biennial regatta hosted by the New York Yacht Club Harbour Court in Newport, R.I. Since the event was first run in 2009, it has attracted top amateur sailors from 51 of the world’s most prestigious yacht clubs from 22 countries.

After five editions in the Swan 42 class, the 2023 event will be the third sailed in the IC37, designed by Mark Mills. The strict one-design nature of this purpose-built class, combined with the fact that each boat is owned and maintained by the New York Yacht Club, ensures a level playing field not seen in any other amateur big-boat sailing competition. The regatta ran through Fridaty, September 15. The 2023 Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup, which is brought to you by title sponsor Rolex and regatta sponsors Helly Hansen, Safe Harbor Marinas, Peters & May and Hammetts Hotel.

Friday’s lone race was sailed in a 20-knot northerly, gusting to 25, in upper Narragansett Bay. The crews were required to reef the jibs and mains on the IC37s, and downwind the crews reported top speeds of 20 knots. The remaining racing was cancelled after the first race so that the fleet could be hauled for safety ahead of the passage of Hurricane Lee, which is expected to pass the southern New England region tonight and tomorrow.

The San Diego Yacht Club won the Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup on its third attempt. Previously, it finished third (2021) and second (2019), both times with Sinks at the helm. In ’21, San Diego ran off four straight victories to put themselves in contention for the championship, but an 18-11 in the final two races put paid to their effort. Similarly, in 2019, an 18th in the third-to-last race thwarted that run at the championship.

According to coach Ed Adams, a two-time Rolex US Sailing Yachtsman of the Year, the team had two goals this year: achieve the lowest worst score of all the teams in the regatta and pass the most boats after Mark 1. San Diego’s worst score was a 10th in Race 3, no other team had lower than a 14th. San Diego’s string of 6-5-5-5-5-6 in the other races showed consistency and an ability to fight back from adversity. Their victory in today’s race lowered their average score per race to 5.375 points.

“Our plan was to try our hardest to be consistent and conservative, but pushing to the top as much as possible,” said Roberts. “The competition here is so stiff. Anything can happen in any race at any moment. You can easily drop into a 12th or 13th after a first. We wanted to make sure we weren’t putting ourselves in positions that were super risky.”

Besides the regatta’s characteristics of tight racing and a leaderboard that saw a lot of movement, the eighth Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup showcased a youth movement. Wade Waddell, the Corinthian helmsman, is 26. Jordan Stevenson, helmsman for Royal New Zealand, is 23. Duncan Gregor, the tactician for Royal Hong Kong, is 19 years old.

“Yeah, 100 percent it could be a launching pad for my career,” said Stevenson. “You can’t get much of a bigger stage than this. You’ve got the America’s Cup, which is huge, but in terms of one-design keelboat racing, there’s not really anything bigger than the Invitational Cup. I’m super happy with how the week’s gone and really proud of the crew.”

“I really enjoyed it. It’s one of the more fun regattas I’ve been to, on both the racing and social side,” said Gregor. “Having no discards makes it a unique regatta, every point counts. It’s high scoring, and chipping away, trying to gain every point possible, is fun.”

The ninth Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup will be held in September 2025 and the Request for Invitation form for the 2024 Resolute Cup, the only surefire pathway for U.S. yacht clubs looking for a berth in the ninth edition, will go live later this year. International yacht clubs are encouraged to email the Sailing Office (sailingoffice@nyyc.org) to express their interest in receiving an invitation. The invitations for 2025 will go out midway through next year.

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Most 25-year-old men are loathe to summon their parents to bail them out of trouble. Part of becoming a full-blown adult is learning to handle your own missteps. But to win the inaugural IC37 North American Championship, sailed this past weekend out of the New York Yacht Club Harbour Court in Newport, R.I., helmsman Nick Sertl had to do just that in the first race. A bad start had the Das Blau Max team looking at a whole fleet of transoms and the strong likelihood of a disappointing race to kick off the final regatta of the 2021 summer season. So, he called on mom [Cory] and dad [Mark], who called tactics and trimmed main, respectively, on the family-oriented boat, and together they carved through the fleet to pull out a remarkable second.

“Our boatspeed was very good,” said Sertl. “Most of that I give credit to my dad, who’s trimming the main. It’s very sensitive. Two or three inches of mainsheet makes the difference between going fast and going slow. A fast boat makes the tactician look good, makes the driver looks good. I think we had all the gears clicking at this regatta where as in previous events we’ve been fast, but made bad decisions or had bad starts.”

The IC37 North American Championship was hosted by the New York Yacht Club Harbour Court in Newport, R.I., from October 1 to 3. The regatta was the final event of the summer 2021 IC37 regatta calendar and featured 17 Corinthian teams battling for top honors over eight races on Rhode Island Sound and Narragansett Bay. The IC37 class was created by the New York Yacht Club to promote one-design competition for amateur sailors. The high-performance 37-foot keelboat was designed by Mark Mills, and strict class rules ensure the most-level playing field in big-boat sailing. The class’s inaugural North American Championship was sponsored by Cadre, Hammetts Hotel, Safe Harbor Marinas and Musto.

That opening race would prove key for a second reason. While Das Blau Max ground back to second, another team saw a strong finish evaporate when it learned after the race that it had crossed the starting line just a few seconds early. Members Only, led by Hannah Swett and Ben Kinney, was eventually able to discard that 18-point penalty for starting early, and sail into the lead on the penultimate race. But Swett, Kinney and company started the final race with no margin for error. Das Blau Max had finished no worse than seventh in the first seven races of the 8-race series and could clinch the championship by forcing Members Only into a poor result.

“We did the math before the race,” said Nick Sertl. “Our worst race to that point was a seventh and Members Only had [the disqualification], so if they sailed an 11th or worse we would win the regatta [regardless of Das Blau Max’s finish in that race]. So, our plan was to pin them out at the start or push them over or something like that.”

It’s hardly a foolproof strategy.

“I failed at it at the 2013 Lightning Junior Worlds,” said Nick Sertl. “We were in the same situation, and the other boat got around us and they beat us.

“There was a moment [today] when we were both on port and pretty close together and then a boat tacked and [Members Only] had to duck them and we went from being half a boatlength ahead of them to two and a half boatlengths ahead. From there on, it was a little more under control. But there were definitely some nervous moments on the boat.”

After essentially matching racing the Members Only team around all five legs of the final race, Das Blau Max (at right, on Thursday’s practice day) finished 15th, with Members Only in 17th, clinching the championship for the Sertl team, which also included Katja, Nick’s sister, on the crew.

“We definitely do [appreciate doing this as a family],” said Nick Sertl. “We have a lot of opinions on the boat and we’re not afraid to express them. But every time we’re home for Christmas and see the photos of us sailing together, I think, ‘That was a real blast sailing together last summer, and I’m really glad we got to do that.’”

With a fourth in the final race. Doug Newhouse’s Yonder team was able to slip past Members Only for second. Finishing fourth in the regatta was the Ed Whitmore’s Ticket. It’s been a long season of learning and growing as a team for Whitmore’s crew, which includes Andy Giglia, the event chair for the IC37 North American Championship. But this result made all the hard work worthwhile.

“The wind was very shifty, so you need to be able to execute all the maneuvers and keep the boat moving,” said Giglia. “We’ve sailed every [IC37] regatta this year, and, for us, this was a huge step up because we were not competing at this level. Our crewwork has gotten phenomenal and our tactics are really good, and it all came together. At the Nationals [in July], we were sixth and we eked out a fourth here. We’re very excited.”

According to Giglia, the Ticket team will continue to climb the learning curve at the 2021-’22 IC37 Winter Series in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

For the majority of the crews at this regatta, however, it will be six months or more before they reconvene in the spring of 2022 to look ahead to another season of the best one-design keelboat racing on the planet.

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Donald Tofias has an expression he’s quite fond of. So fond, In fact, he trademarked it and put it on the back of a crew shirt for his W-76 Wild Horses. “Yachting is the winner” it said.

“The reason we came up with the phrase is when we first started racing the W-76, we didn’t win a lot of races,” says Tofias, of Newport, R.I. “But when we did win, we’d say, ‘Yachting is the winner.’”

Racing opportunities this summer for Wild Horses, a 76-foot wooden yacht that combines a classic hull form with a modern underbody and construction methods, have been far and few between. It isn’t the sort of boat on which you can gather a few friends for a weeknight bash around some government marks. Sailing in a spinnaker division takes a crew of 20. Even racing in a non-spinnaker division, as Wild Horses did for the 166th Annual Regatta this weekend, requires a dozen more people on board.

“I’ve always loved the Annual Regatta,” says Tofias, who won the Non-Spinnaker Class this weekend with two firsts and a third. “I think I’ve done it most every year for the better part of 30 years. I didn’t want to miss it. We had the boat on the mooring all summer, and it was time to race. We hadn’t sailed much on the boat at all until the Sail For Hope on September 12. We did well in Sail For Hope, so we decided to do the Annual Regatta also.”

The Annual Regatta was first sailed on the Hudson River on July 16 and 18, 1846. A similar competition the previous year was called a Trial of Speed. With a few exceptions for world wars and other global crises, the event has been held every year since. For the majority of its existence, the New York Yacht Club held its Annual Regatta on waters close to New York City. Since 1988, however, the event has been sailed out of the Harbour Court clubhouse in Newport, R.I., and has settled into the current three-day format, which includes a race around Conanicut Island on Friday and two days of buoy racing or navigator-course racing on Saturday and Sunday. The 166th Annual Regatta, which is sponsored by Hammetts Hotel and Helly Hansen, also included the 2020 Melges IC37 National Championship.

The Annual Regatta is traditionally held in early June, at the start of the Newport sailing season. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was pushed back first to late August before finally settling on the first weekend in October.

“We were committed to running this event,” says New York Yacht Club Commodore William P. Ketcham (Greenwich, Conn.). “Which is why we kept delaying the event rather than canceling it outright. It was challenge, but we finally got to a point where we could run it based on Rhode Island’s COVID guidelines and our own Club policies on safety. The enthusiasm on the water, both this weekend and at last weekend’s Race Week at Newport presented by Rolex, was tremendous. Our team on Maxine packed basically our entire sailing season into two weeks, and we couldn’t have had more fun.”

With 11 points in four races, Ketcham’s J/44 Maxine placed second in ORC 3. At the head of the class was Tom Sutton’s Leading Edge. While Sutton hails from Houston, Texas—where he lives and sails in the cooler months—Newport has become a second home.

With most multi-day sailing regattas in 2020 were canceled, the Leading Edge team cobbled together a summer of weeknight and one-day races in and around Narragansett Bay.

“We raced every race on Tuesday night and did the weekend regattas,” says Sutton. “We went to Block Island with the Twenty Hundred Club, we raced around Prudence Island two times, Conanicut Island four or five times. We’ve gotten in more sailboat racing than in most years. But we miss racing around the buoys. That’s what we really like.”

All that time on the water paid off this weekend with wins in Friday’s Around the Island Race as well as the weekend series around the buoys. Sutton was quick to share the credit, singling out his wife Diana for her work off the water and on the foredeck and the team’s tactical brain trust of Tom Meeh and Alex Crowell.

“My guys work as hard or harder than anybody,” says Tom Sutton. “We’ve sailed together since 2014 and everybody a great time this year. We’re all looking forward to coming back next summer.”

Due to the compressed sailing schedule for 2020, the second Melges IC37 National Championship was held concurrently with the Annual Regatta. The competition in the 13-boat one-design class was intense through each of the nine races. While consistency was elusive, Pacific Yankee, co-skippered by Drew Freides (Los Angeles, Calif.) and Bill Ruh (Newport Beach, Calif.), showed that it was without a doubt the fastest boat. The only wobbles in Pacific Yankee’s scoreline came today, in very light air, after they’d established an all-but-insurmountable lead through the first seven races. Pacific Yankee finished the championship 13 points ahead of Midnight Blue, skippered by Alexis Michas (New York, N.Y.), and Blazer II, skippered by New York Yacht Club Vice Commodore Christopher J. Culver (Newport, R.I.). Those two boats finished the regatta tied on points—and only 2 points ahead of fourth place—with Midnight Blue winning the tiebreaker.

“We’ve had almost the entire team together for the past year, and it takes a team to win on this boat,” says Freides. “We spent a lot of time trying to make the boat fast and we found a number of techniques to keep the boat flat. Like the Melges 20, you have to keep the boat flat and de-powered, especially in the waves, so that’s what we strived for.”

While the Annual Regatta has traditionally been restricted to larger boats, this year the Club opened the regatta up to two one-design classes that had never before competed in the event, Shields and Sonars. Over the course of three days, the two classes each completed nine races, with the Friday races being scored as a separate series. For the Shields class, which had its 2020 national championship canceled, this regatta was the next best thing.

“Our crew—Peter Schott, Rachel Balaban, Ted Hood and Matt Buechner, plus my co-skipper Reed Baer—have been sailing together for 20 years,” says class winner John Burnham (Middletown, R.I.) on Grace. “For the last 10, more often than not, the national champions have been either Aeolus or Maverick. The other boat that gives us fits is Ken Deyett’s Bit-O-Honey from Beverly Yacht Club in Marion, Mass. In this regatta, we were lucky to beat all three, so it felt almost like winning the Nationals we never had this year. On behalf of the class, I’d like to thank the New York Yacht Club for inviting us to race in the Annual Regatta this year

The 10-strong Sonar fleet consisted of boats chartered by New York Yacht Club members for the regatta. John Bainton (Norwalk, Conn.) won five of the nine races sailed and took the overall win in both the Friday and weekend series.

“It was just great to be able to do an actual event where we sailed for three days and had some good competition,” says Bainton. “Aside from missing the on-shore social part, it was a fantastic time on the water.

With a breeze that seemed to be always in flux, and the strong current generated by a moon tide running, Bainton said the key to success was his crew’s ability to keep their head out of the boat.

“The wind was very sporadic, so being able to see the wind up the course and read what the current was doing across the course was very important,” he says. “One of my crew members, Dale Harper, is actually a harbor pilot for Newport Harbor, so he as tremendous amount of knowledge of how the water moves through the harbor.”

In past years, the Annual Regatta would signal the start of the Newport sailing season, with competitors looking forward to Race Weeks in Newport or Block Island, or a long thrash to Bermuda. This year, however, it closes out the racing season. The summer of 2020 wasn’t what anyone expected, but those fortunate enough to participate in the 166th Annual Regatta will head into winter with fresh memories of competition and camaraderie.

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IC37

Since 2009, the New York YC has relied on privately-owned Club Swan 42s for its biennial signature event, the Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup, but with many of the 42s sold to overseas owners over the past few years, the club’s marquee marque regatta was in jeopardy of being without a fleet. It was time for action.

“For the Invitational Cup to be a continuous event, we determined that we needed to own the assets,” says Dr. Paul Zabetakis, who led a small committee, including Chairman of the Selection Subcommittee, Art Santry, through the yearlong selection process that resulted in the commissioning of the IC37.

By the spring of 2019, the club will own and manage a 20-boat charter fleet of these stripped-down 37-footers, a program that Zabetakis likens to Long Beach YC in California, which owns and uses Catalina 37s for its Congressional Cup, as well as Balboa YC (Calif.), which commissioned a fleet of 21-footers for its Governor’s Cup youth match-race regatta.

Early in the process, says Zabetakis, the club canvased its members and results confirmed little appetite for anything too big or too grand-prix. “It was apparent that younger members — in their 20s to 40s — are not buying [big] boats. Millennials don’t want to own anything — what’s called being ‘asset light,’” says Zabetakis. “So we determined that we need to own the boats.” Plus, he adds, having boats available to the membership, like their Sonars which are heavily used for team racing, provides another opportunity for members sitting on sidelines to get back into racing bigger boats. The driving factors behind the IC37, Zabetakis emphasizes, is to make the program work economically for the club, to protect the Invitational Cup, and get members back into boats, with charter fees covering the ongoing operating costs.

Through a vetting process, request for proposals went to a half-dozen select yacht designers, but word spread, and before long the committee had 19 proposals in hand. “That was our first indication we were on to something,” says Zabetakis. Through a voting process of elimination, they selected the design put forth by Mark Mills, of the UK.

The parameters were for a cost-conscious and low-maintenance boat sailed by seven or eight crew. It had to be fast, but stable enough to be sailed by a wide spectrum of individuals. One thing they were clear on from the outset was they didn’t want any semblance of an interior. Unlike the Swan 42, this is a raceboat, meant to be raced hard and put away wet. It’s bare below and flush decked, which allows a more efficient deck and sail-control layout for buoy racing.

To avoid having hydraulic systems (for cost and maintenance issue) the group favored for a carbon rig with split backstays and square-top mainsail. Initially, the rest of the sail inventory will include one reef-able hanked jib, and one all-purpose spinnaker. With North Sails the official class sail supplier, upwind sails will be 3Di. Harken is the official hardware supplier. A mast jack and plate system will provide gross rig-tune adjustments, and simplified jib-sheet controls will be up/down, inboard, and fore and aft.

The standard electronics package doesn’t include any wind instruments; only GPS, VHF, and two mast displays for heading, boatspeed, and depth. The base boat price is $259,500 and charters will own their respective sail inventories.

The committee was also keen to have the boats built domestically, which proved to be a far greater challenge than commissioning the design, but ultimately led them to Westerly Marine in Santa Ana, California. Westerly, better known for custom builds and service work for the West Coast’s grand-prix set, but also built the Governor’s Cup 21s. With molds well underway in September, the first boat is expected out of Westerly by February 2018, and, should all go according to plan, the builder is tasked with delivering two boats per month thereafter.

The New York YC is fronting the startup costs of a long production run, anticipating buyers beyond its own clubhouse (a 100-plus boat fleet in the not-so distant future, says Zabetakis). Anyone can get in on the action, and to facilitate class management and marketing they’ve tapped Melges Performance Sailboats.

As far as managing its own IC37 fleet in Newport, Rhode Island, the club has an agreement in place with nearby New England Boatworks, which will serve as base of operations. A full-time charter program manager will care for the fleet and interface with members for charters. They expect to have four to six boats in 2018 to begin developing tuning guides and study the performance characteristics of this new one-design yacht. For the 2019, they expect to have the full 20-boat charter fleet on the line in time for the Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup. NYYC members will have access to a 2019 season-long charter program that will include five designated regattas.

The regatta charter operation is straightforward, not much different than a rental car, says Zabetakis. The boat will be prepped at NEB, launched before an event, and received by the charterer’s boat captain. The charterer assumes all regatta fees, a damage deposit and owns the sails. At the conclusion of the charter, the boat captain returns it to the manager, takes the sails off and delivers them to North Sails for storage or service. The fleet manager hauls the boat and preps it for the next regatta.

One-design class rules, which Zabetakis says mirror those of the Swan 42 Class Association, are being refined, but the essentials today have a maximum crew weight of 660 kilograms (1,455 pounds). If there’s eight or more crewmembers, two must be female; if seven, then one female, and if less than seven, no female required. There will be no weigh-ins, but the organizing authority can protest a team if it believes it to be out of compliance. As a Corinthian class, the only professional sailor allowed onboard for class racing is a “legitimate” boat captain. The boat captain, however, cannot helm, trim sails or call tactics.

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