The New York Yacht Club announced the launch of its International Women’s Championship, a female-only competition that will be sailed in the club’s fleet of IC37s in September 2026.

According to an announcement about the biennial event, teams of nine or more sailors are invited to request an invitation regardless of country, yacht club affiliation or amateur status. “As with other provided-boat events hosted by the New York YC, the International Women’s Championship will feature the ultimate level playing field,” the announcement says, “a combination of provided one-design boats and sails maintained to the highest racing standard with uniform rig tuning and on-the-water umpiring.”

The winning skipper will receive a Rolex timepiece.

“The New York Yacht Club envisions that this event, like the very successful Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup, will emerge as one of the sport’s top events,” says L. Jay Cross, Commodore of the New York Yacht Club. “The IC37 keelboat was designed to reward talented crews who can execute exquisite teamwork, speed transitions and excellent tactics, regardless of size or gender, so we’re excited to put these great boats into the hands of the world’s top female sailors.”

Event chair Cory Sertl, a past Rolex Women’s International Keelboat champion, says, “Our goal is to attract a truly international field of top competitors. We are hopeful that top professional sailors from the Olympics, Women’s America’s Cup and other top competitions will field teams and compete alongside top amateur keelboat sailors. The IC37 is a great platform that can accommodate sailors of all sizes and ages while still facilitating a robust and athletic competition.”

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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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The team from New Orleans—led by skipper John Lovell and tactician Marcus Eagan, and supported both here and in New Orleans by hundreds, if not thousands of family, friends and fellow members—were incredibly consistent through 12 races over five days, with nine top-four finishes and not a single race result outside the top 10.

In some races, it looked simple as the team parlayed solid starts, prescient tactical calls and superior boatspeed into an express pass to the head of the 19-boat fleet of international yacht club teams. But in other races, particularly in the second half of the regatta, it was a battle as Southern spent a fair bit of time in the back half of the fleet.

“It’s never easy,” said Eagan, who skippered the team’s winning 2017 entry, with Lovell as his tactician. “The leads are always marginal, it’s just crazy. Especially when you’re up the Bay in a light northerly. It was very dicey. It’s all about that one cross or that good start.”

After four straight wins on Day 3 and Day 4, San Diego YC started the final day looking every bit a legitimate threat to overtake Southern for the championship. But the first race of the day couldn’t have gone any worse; an 18th knocking San Diego out of contention. Royal Thames Yacht Club took the race win, and assumed second place in the overall standings.

The regatta’s final race was perhaps its most mentally challenging, with the breeze fading in and out and shifting frequently. Royal Thames started on the wrong foot by fouling Southern just seconds before the start. But RTYC tactician Ian Dobson and skipper John Greenland made quick work of the variable breeze to climb right back into the hunt, rounding the first mark one place ahead of Southern.

Being in front was one small victory, but getting enough separation to overcome SYC’s 13-point advantage proved too steep a climb. Greenland continued to slice through the fleet for a third, but Southern was able to follow suit, finishing sixth and becoming the second yacht club, after the Royal Canadian Yacht Club in 2011 and 2013, to win the trophy for a second time.

The Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup is 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 48 of the world’s most prestigious yacht clubs from 21 countries. After five editions in the Swan 42 class, the 2021 event will be the second 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, will ensure a level playing field not seen in any other amateur big-boat sailing competition. The regatta will run through Saturday, September 18, with racing starting on Tuesday, September 14. A live broadcast on Facebook and YouTube, starting on Wednesday, September 15, will allow fellow club members, friends, family and sailing fans from around the world follow the action as it happens. Nineteen teams from nine countries will compete in 2021. The 2021 Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup is brought to you by title sponsor Rolex and regatta sponsors Helly Hansen and Hammetts Hotel.

As is tradition at the Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup, the final day started with a Parade of Nations around Newport Harbor, complete with multiple cannon salutes. That ceremony completed, all 19 teams and assorted race committee and support craft headed north of Gould Island in Narragansett Bay’s East Passage for an on-time start at 11 am.

It was apparent before the first gun that the day of racing would be anything but straightforward. The breeze, forecast for the middle teens, was barely holding onto double digit windspeeds and regularly dancing right or left of the median wind direction. For a crew with solid boat speed and a lead to defend, it was far from ideal.

“I was pretty stressed, I couldn’t even eat in between races,” said Lovell, an Olympic silver medalist in the Tornado class. “You don’t want to choke. Our goal going into the day was 10 points, and I think we got nine. I can’t thank the crew enough.

“Our team just put it together. Everyone did their jobs and did them well. Marcus said it best at the beginning of the event, ‘If everyone does their job, we’re going to be there.’ And everyone did their job, and we didn’t make any real big mistakes, and that was it.”

Also on the Southern team were Andrew Eagan, Dwight LeBlanc IV, Christian Gambel, Jay Kuebel, Miia Newman, Katy Lovell and Rick Merriman. Kuebel, both Eagans, Lovell and Merriman were all part of the winning team in 2017. Merriman is now the only three-time winner of the Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup, having also won the inaugural edition as part of the New York Yacht Club team.

For host New York Yacht Club, it was an up-and-down regatta that included two race wins, but also a quartet of double-digit finishes. It ended on a strong note for Commodore Christopher J. Culver and his crew as they won the pin, hit the left corner and took the victory in the final race of the regatta.

“I’m so proud of the team,” said Culver of his crew. “They worked so hard, first to qualify as the New York Yacht Club representative and then all week during the regatta. We feel we left a little bit out there on the racecourse, but every team probably feels that way. So, it was really special to finish on a high note. I love our team, they really came together well and were so competitive. The camaraderie is really special as well.”

Another team ending with a bang was the Royal Swedish Yacht Club, which followed New York Yacht Club across the line in the final race to record its best finish of the regatta.

“We were building up to this for three days,” said Royal Swedish Yacht Club skipper Filip Engelbert. “We started off a little bit too hot tempted on board, I think, and then we decided, three days to go, just have a little bit of fun. We were gradually building up and finally we came through in the last race. A happy boat is a good boat.”

Thanks to a second in the first race of the day, Yacht Club Costa Smeralda moved from ninth to seventh in the overall standings, by far its best finish in three Invitational Cup appearances.

“We changed our tactics for the start, and we had a really good start in the first race,” said Edoardo Mancinelli Scotti, the team’s main trimmer. “We had a really good tactician, we went on the left and turned the first mark first. It was a really good race for us and we gained two places in the final standings. This was my second Invitational Cup here in Newport, I just love this place and the IC37 is fantastic.”

But no one was more pleased than Southern. A proud club with a strong sailing tradition, it has established a new standard of excellence at this event, and its domestic championship the Resolute Cup, which it won in 2016.

“It’s just incredible, a wonderful event,” said Lovell. “This is, in my opinion, the best big boat regatta in the world.”

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On a sun-kissed summer afternoon in Newport, Rhode Island, in June, three meticulously restored sailing yachts are tethered to New York YC’s Harbor Court landing. All are wooden, of course, and each a masterpiece of Captain Nathanael G. Herreshoff and the craftsmen of the eponymous manufacturing company in nearby Bristol. Representing different eras of one-design club racing at the New York YC are Amorita, a New York 30; Mar­ilee, a New York 40; and the strikingly maintained and heavily-raced New York 50 Spartan, soon bound for the Mediterranean in search of better competition.

The occasion to display these preserved icons of yacht racing is the Herreshoff Marine Museum & America’s Cup Hall of Fame’s Golden Jubilee, a summer-long celebration of wooden spars, white sails and buried rails. In a few hours, the bar will open and dinner will be served to 200 or so paying guests, but first it’s time for tours and the hushed admiration of these multimillion-dollar restorations. Spartan’s owners have restricted access to the deck, but even here there’s plenty to admire and quiz boat captain Judd Burman who’s delivered the boat from across the harbor.

On the western face of the dock is Marilee, the new acquisition of New York YC member Ken Colburn who recently sold his New York YC ClubSwan 42 and joined the classic yacht keepers club. He and his wife, he says, had been longing to own a wooden yacht of sorts and this one practically fell into his lap a few years ago. Texan Tim Rutter, Marilee’s previous owner, had poured more than $3 million into Marilee’s restoration before cleaning up on the classic yacht circuit in 2018 and then vanishing from the scene. Even Colburn, who I’m told bought the boat for a steal on auction, says he has never spoken to Rutter directly. But he sure is thankful Rutter got Marilee up to speed for the next 100 years.

“The joking comment is that there’s only one time to buy a boat and that’s after someone’s restored it,” Colburn says. “And that’s not to be rude, but restoring a boat is an unknown expense.”

So too is the upkeep.

This summer’s early-season races have been learning experiences for Colburn who has campaigned a J/105, the ClubSwan 42 and the New York YC’s latest fleet of IC37s by Melges. Colburn says coming to grips with Marilee has been rewarding for himself and his mostly amateur crew. His first step in preparing for the switch to Marilee’s big underwater appendages and sails, he says, was spending the offseason on a stationary rowing machine.

“She’s heavy,” Colburn says. “She’s wet [although less so for the bowman—Ed.] and has lots of weather helm. She’s a beautiful boat, but she is a workout.”

Colburn’s most noticeable addition to his area is a telescopic tiller extension, which allows him to see the telltales on his headsails. He also added a portable display box that houses chart plotter and boatspeed displays: “Telltales…speedo…telltales…speedo, that’s how I like to sail,” he says.

Marilee’s latest keeper is also learning the nuances of a unique sail plan that essentially requires filling the foretriangle with as much sail area as possible and balancing that against the big mainsail towering overhead from Marilee’s gleaming wooden spar. Sail changes don’t happen on the fly, says Colburn, so planning ahead and knowing the course angles is critical to establishing the right balance and heel angle—and not getting overpowered. “In the [New York YC] Annual [the wind] was high teens and it was a beast,” Colburn says, “but she has a sweet spot at 12 to 16 knots.”

Applying a similar ethos as he has with his previous one-designs, he says the learning process will be a gradual and methodical one, with the assistance of longtime sailmaker Jack Slattery. “It’s the same learning curve [as with any one-design]—get on a boat and try and tweak,” Colburn says. “I have not raced it enough to know [what is fast]. What I see in a race is 15 degrees either side of my headstay and the speedo, so we approach it like a dinghy.”

The appeal of the New York 40 class was that it could be raced by amateur crews and family teams, unlike the New York 50s that preceded them in the early 1900s. The New York 50s were a handful, and even today, racing Spartan requires a crew that knows what they’re doing, especially when the call comes to set or strike the jackyard topsail.

Burman, Spartan’s current boat captain of seven years, says New York 50s were raced with nine crewmembers in the class’s heydays on Long Island Sound, but today, Spartan gets around the racecourse with nearly twice that. “The boat was quite crew intensive for that period—they were a handful,” he says. “We race with 15, and in a breeze, it’s still a handful.”

Spartan’s current owners, according to Burman, joined the restoration while it was underway with the previous owner who started the restoration in the late 1980s, slowly picking away at the project as funding came available. The 72-footer was eventually moved from Connecticut to the Herreshoff Museum’s waterfront facilities in Bristol, where it sat on the hard for eight years or so.

The current owners, Burman says, fell in love with the boat at first sight. “They were fascinated by the gaff-rigged sloops of that era. And the fact that Spartan was designed by Herreshoff and built by Bristol—they’re both Americans—was quite enticing as well,” Burman says. “Plus, the fact that she needed to be saved.”

While the boat is now museum quality, Spartan’s owners have been racing it extensively, and they’re not afraid to press the boat to its limits, Burman says. “They want to race the boat and they want to go fast, but we do ask people to be respectful. If you can do it without trashing it…she’s a raceboat and that’s what she was built to do.”

Synthetic rigging has replaced wire in most applications and the sails are built using all the latest design suites, but the mainsail’s leather and bronze gaff saddle is still lubricated with good old-fashioned lanolin oil—which is good for the spar as well as the scalp.

The mainsail’s boom and gaff, which are hoisted 50 feet up the mainmast, creates the equivalent of a modern-day square-top, and secured on deck are Spartan’s jackyard topsail spars, which Burman says requires an orchestrated effort to get aloft. Once hoisted, it’s preferable to kept them there jackyard can capture the wind above the mainsail gaff itself, especially when racing in lighter conditions

“We do have a refined sail chart,” Burman says. “Mainsail only would be 18-knots plus, and in anything less than that we start thinking about the racecourse, possibly hoisting the jackyard.” There are five control lines to set this critical sail Burman explains: the halyard, the tack, the leader line that’s fed through a bronze ferrule at the top of the spar and then the two sheets associated with the club spar—an outer sheet and an inner sheet. “There’s a fair bit of unison that happens and a coordination of all five of them that takes a bit of practice,” he says. “If we’re going jackyard, it’s a decision for the day.”

From there, the team has at their disposal an assortment of headsails and spinnakers to work with, all in the quest for power, balance and heel angle. “It’s such a main-dominant powered boat,” Burman says, “so the main is being played constantly.” With such a short “J” measurement, and with having an inner and outer forestay, he adds, “everything gets paired up really close so all your leech profiles kind of land on top of each other.”

When the mainsail gets eased, therefore, the foresails must as well, which makes trimming on Spartan far more dynamic than one may think.

“It’s a lot of communication and developing a team that’s consistent,” Burman says. “A lot of the crew has been sailing for eight to nine years, and that’s huge. You can pull on the tiller as hard as you want, but until you ease the main, the boat is not turning at all. That being said, on powered up reaches we’ve had two people on the tiller, but generally we try to set it up so it’s balanced and we don’t put on the brakes.”

In other words, even after nearly a century of sailing, with Spartan it’s still about letting the ol’ girl run as fast as she can—a run certainly worthy of a celebration.

*Since its founding, the Herreshoff Marine Museum waterfront campus has grown dramatically, starting in 1971 when it had no home but instead consisted of a small fleet of Herreshoff boats, a literal “floating museum.” Today, the museum includes a number of original company buildings, the Herreshoff family homestead, and a modern exhibition building, the Isaac B. Merriman, Jr. Hall of Boats. Named for one of the museum’s earliest benefactors, this exhibit space displays more than 60 Herreshoff boats, steam engines, and an array of artifacts. The Nathanael G. Herreshoff Model Room & Workshop exhibit is a re-creation of Captain Nat’s own model room and workshop, and contains more than 500 original design models, tools and documents. Over the past five years, the museum has delivered STEM-focused experiential education programs to thousands of Rhode Island students. The museum is now partnering with the National Sailing Hall of Fame on an America’s Cup Hall of Fame exhibit at its new Sailing Museum in Newport, RI.

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With a potent combination of boatspeed, tactical acumen and team racing skills, the New York Yacht Club team strung together 13 straight victories en route to a win in the inaugural Women’s 2v2 Team Race, hosted by the New York Yacht Club Harbour Court this weekend. The team’s lone loss—to the eventual runner-up from the College of Charleston in the final flight of races—came with overall victory already in hand. The New York Yacht Club team, led by skipper/captain Emily Maxwell and skipper Erika Reineke, finished with 13 points. Charleston was second with 11, while Southern Yacht Club took third with 8 points.

“We sailed well, we almost went undefeated,” said Maxwell. “In my boat it was the teamwork, the boat handling. My crew was amazing. There were times we were behind, but we did a lot of boat handling around other teams. Erika and I worked well to pin people. The teamwork within our team, the boat handling, really helped us around the course.

“Our two boats sailed very well together. Sometimes when you have a lot of great sailors, they don’t always mix well. But we happened to mesh very well.”

Maxwell (at right, holding tiller) didn’t just sail in the regatta, she was also the driving force behind it. For the past decade, the New York Yacht Club has hosted each August a trio of team races that draw top competitors from around the country and abroad. Each event is coed and, due to the age restrictions for two of the three regattas, caters to a different demographic. But this regatta was the first women’s-only team race the Club has hosted.

The response was significantly better than expected, with twice as many requests for invitation as there were spots available, and an incredible array of talented women sailors, including world champions, Olympic medalists and America’s Cup sailors.

“I’ve been trying to get more women’s team racing in general post-college because there’s not a lot of opportunities for women to do team racing,” says Maxwell. “So I and a few others at the Club came up with this proposal in the fall and put it forth to the Sailing Committee. It was approved, and we started creating the event in the winter.”

Just getting the event off the ground, especially after such a challenging year for any sporting event, was a victory. The smiles on the face of all the competitors and the easy camaraderie in the parking lot after racing were unassailable proof that the event was a success for each team, regardless of the final standings.

Winning the title as well was icing on the cake for Maxwell, who earned All-American honors at Boston College. But she’s already looking ahead.

“I think this event will continue to further women’s sailing and give more opportunities for women to continue team racing and to sail every position on the boat,” she says. “Often, when you’re sailing a coed team race, you’re not driving or trimming main, you’re more in the front of the boat. You might also see more additional clubs popping up with events, and hopefully there will be a women’s team racing circuit eventually.”

For more details on the Women’s 2v2 Team Race, please click here.

Winning New York Yacht Club Team (top photo, left to right): Allison Ferraris, Bianca Rom, Cory Sertl, Emily Maxwell (Team Captain), PRO Clare Harrington, Abby Preston, Laura Ann Keller, Erika Reineke and Lyndsey Gibbons-Neff

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Once again, the Rolex Fastnet Race has confirmed itself to be by far the world’s largest offshore yacht race. After the entry for the Royal Ocean Racing Club’s flagship event was opened at 1200 UTC, the 340 available places for boats in the IRC fleet were all taken within just four minutes and 37 seconds. This was just 13 seconds outside the record time recorded in 2017.

The first entry to sign up on the RORC’s Sailgate online entry system for the biennial 605-mile race from Cowes to Plymouth via the Fastnet Rock off southwest Ireland, was regular competitor Derek Saunders and his Farr 60 Venomous. He narrowly beat the German Hamburgischer Verein Seefahrt club’s Judel Vrolijk 52 Haspa Hamburg and Tom Kneen’s JPK 11.80 Sunrise who were next fastest.

After the first two minutes, 180 boats had already been entered successfully. After the first frenetic four minutes and 37 seconds when the maximum entry limit was reached, subsequent requests were filtered through to the reserve list. Ultimately, after the deluge subsided, 440 boats had entered in total.

Yachts from 25 countries are due to take part this year: The bulk of these are from the UK, from where 201 boats were registered, followed by the dominant French (winners of the last three editions of the Rolex Fastnet Race) with 81 and the Netherlands with 33.

The entry includes a strong contingent of 16 boats from the United States, many making the passage across to the UK in the Rolex Transatlantic Race 2019. This leaves Newport, Rhode island on June 25, bound for Cowes via the Lizard and is organized by the RORC in conjunction with the New York Yacht Club, Royal Yacht Squadron and Storm Trysail Club. Entries from further afield have been received from Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Turkey, Hong Kong and Korea among others.

This strong entry shows that the change of date has made little impression on the desire to do the Rolex Fastnet Race: The start date was moved to Saturday, 3 August and for the first time it will be setting off before Lendy Cowes Week (rather than on the traditional Sunday immediately after it).

For the RORC’s Australian Racing Manager Chris Stone this is his first Rolex Fastnet entry day experience since taking up his position in Cowes a year ago: “It has been unbelievably busy. Before 1200 we had about 500 people who were all on standby, logged into their accounts, which was a good indicator about how busy it was going to be. Then we went straight to 340 and on to 440, including the waiting list.”

Among the entries is at least one 100-foot maxi while Stone reckons that one of the top fights in the race will potentially be between the six Cookson 50s.

It should be noted that with the Rolex Fastnet Race the RORC has led the way among the organizers of the world’s classic 600 milers in inviting other grand prix racing yacht classes to compete outside of the main IRC fleet. This has led to the race featuring some of the very best offshore racing hardware from yachts competing in the Volvo Ocean Race to the giant 100-foot long French Ultime multihulls and the IMOCA 60s of the Vendée Globe. For 2019, an especially strong line-up of Class 40s is anticipated. “We are expecting around another 50 boats – thirty Class 40s and twenty IMOCA boats,” Stone forecasts.

Meanwhile for the fleet, there remains the qualification process that will take place over the course of the 2019 season, with teams required to gain adequate miles and experience in order to meet the Rolex Fastnet Race’s stringent entry requirements. Competing yachts must complete more than 300 race miles with at least 50 percent of their Rolex Fastnet Race crew onboard.

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Proponents of team racing have set their sights on the discipline’s inclusion in the 2028 Olympic Regatta. The inaugural Global Team Race, which will be held Oct. 5 to 7 at the New York Yacht Club Harbour Court, may prove a crucial milestone on the long road to earning a place on sailing’s grandest stage.

The Global Team Race was created from scratch less than a year ago and will feature two-on-two team racing in the New York Yacht Club’s fleet of Sonar keelboats.

“We couldn’t be more pleased with the response we have received,” says event chair Steven Wolff, a veteran team racer and umpire. “We have teams coming from South America, Asia, Australia, Europe and the United Kingdom, in addition to teams from the United States. We had to turn away a handful of teams and there were others that would’ve applied to compete if they’d had more time to plan. Team racing is growing dramatically in Europe, particularly the two-on-two format. We are already planning a second edition for next year in Britain and hope to confirm shortly the following year in Europe.”

Keelboat team racing, which has been increasing in popularity over the last quarter century, is a comprehensive test of tactics, strategy, boatspeed and team work. Spinnakers are regularly used, adding another layer of difficulty to the mark roundings and downwind legs and increasing the opportunities for boats behind to catch up.

Traditionally, team racing was sailed in a three-on-three or four-on-four format. But two-on-two is logistically less demanding for both teams and regatta organizers. It’s also easier for spectators to follow. The winner of the match is whichever team doesn’t cross the finish line last.

“As long as one of a team’s boats is behind a one boat from the other team, there’s a chance for a comeback,” says Wolff. “Two-on-two is a better fit for international competition where competitors have to travel great distances because there’s fewer people required. And you can get more sailing with the same amount of resources. With the Club’s fleet of 22 Sonars, we can have 10 teams on the water at one time. We expect to do a tremendous number of races.”

The more races, the more opportunity for the best teams to rise to the top for an eventual championship round that will determine the overall winner. But choosing a champion is just one goal for this event. Whether it’s the America’s Cup; the Annual Regatta, which has run nearly every year since 1845; or the Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup the New York Yacht Club has a knack and a passion for creating long-standing, iconic sailing events. Organizers hope the Global Team Race follows a similar pattern.

“We have invited the anticipated hosts of the next two events in the hopes of improving the regatta for future editions,” says Wolff. “We’re preparing a declaration of trust for the Global Team Race, which is a deed of gift that will perpetuate the event. The ultimate goal is for this event to be seen as a world championship of keelboat team racing.”

Competing teams include Bayerischer YC (Germany), Dutch Match & Team Racing Assn. (Netherlands), Japan Sailing Federation (Japan), New York YC (New York), Reale Circolo Canottieri Tevere Remo (Italy), Royal Cork YC (Ireland), Royal Northern & Clyde YC (Scotland), Royal Thames YC (England), Sorrento Sailing Couta Boat Club (Australia), St. Francis YC (San Francisco), Yacht Club Argentino (Argentina) and Yacht Club Costa Smeralda (Italy).

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NEWPORT, R.I. — To describe the tactical approach which led Eastern Yacht Club to the low-point score of Day 3 of the 2017 Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup, Ben Richardson used a word not often associated with successful big-boat sailing: reactionary. “You had to be pretty reactionary,” said Richardson, a former Laser Masters World Champion and Pan Am Games competitor. “We never went into any particular race saying, ‘Oh, you’ve got to go left,’ or ‘You’ve got go right.’ You had to continually adapt up the beat and see where the pressure was. There were pretty big pressure differentials and you had to connect the dots up the beat, and on the run.”

Eastern Yacht Club moved from fourth to third in the overall standings and now has a 15-point advantage over a pack of boats clumped in fourth to ninth. Southern Yacht Club finished third on the day, but only two points behind Eastern, and leads the regatta by 9 points over Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron, which won two of the day’s three races.

The 2017 Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup takes place September 9 to 16 at the New York Yacht Club Harbour Court, in Newport, R.I. Amateur sailors representing 14 yacht clubs from around the globe have converged on Newport to race in the ultimate one-design, big-boat competition. The boats and sails are provided and the rig tune is standardized across the fleet. The Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup is sponsored by Rolex, Porsche, Nautor’s Swan, AIG and Helly Hansen and is being broadcast live via the web.

One of the key calls of the day came well before the first start. Principle Race Officer Ron Hopkins initially sent the fleet to the offshore course, but when the fog rolled in he reversed coursed and moved the fleet north of Gould Island, inside Narragansett Bay, where the water is flatter, the wind is a little less predictable and the racing is more frenetic.

Not surprisingly, some teams that had struggled offshore came alive on the “inside” course, including the Japan Sailing Federation, which scored a third, fifth and seventh on the day and moved from 10th to seventh in the overall standings.

“For us, the outside course was not so good,” said Yasutaka Funazawa, the skipper for the Japan Sailing Federation. “So we have to change something. We are getting better. Today was more the team working well.”

Also making the most of “moving day,” as the middle day of a long regatta is often known, was the host New York Yacht Club, which found its rhythm after a string of tough races to start the regatta and moved from 11th to sixth on the strength of a fifth and two fourths.

“I went to school at Boston University and sailed in the Charles River, so shifty conditions have always been good for me,” said tactician Brad Read. “We’re starting to get more confidence. We’ve been working really hard, out there between races we’re doing timed runs at the start. We just haven’t been very good at it [during the first six races]. So practice makes perfect, and we’re practicing really hard between races to get our time and distance right.

“Our motto going into today was: it’s the start of the fourth quarter and its 28-9,” Read added, referencing the New England Patriots’ improbable comeback last February in Super Bowl 51. “It’s just picking away, every tack is important, every jibe is important, every mark rounding is important. We’re doing the little things now and it’s making it more fun to go sailing.”

Not surprisingly, however, the teams that were really strong on the first two days, continued to shine. Great teams transcend the conditions. Southern Yacht Club and Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron combined to win all three races and take four of nine podium positions today. The Australian team knocked a point off the 10-point lead Southern enjoyed in the overall standings to start the day and both boats, along with Eastern, moved further clear of the rest of the fleet.

“Two years ago we got off to a similar start,” said Richardson. “[In 2015] once we moved inside during the last few days of the regatta, we really turned a corner and came right back in it. The same thing happened today. Our starts were improved, but as everybody knows, getting away from other boats makes a huge difference.”

Richardson also noted that after six days of practice and racing, each team has found its comfort zone in the Swan 42s.

“If you give away a little bit, that’s something you’re not going to get back,” Richardson said. “We’ve all been sailing for six days, and some teams came more prepared than others. But every team is getting it down now.”

The race for first has really come down to three boats, and two of them will need some help from the current leader if they want to hoist the Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup trophy on Saturday. Another strong day by Southern tomorrow may well sort out the overall podium. The most interesting racing may focus on the battle for fourth, with six teams all within 8 points of that spot. Those positions are unlikely to be decided until the final beat of the final race.

Racing for the 2017 Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup will start Friday and Saturday at 11 a.m. There are three races remaining in the 12-race series. Tune in to the event Facebook page for live coverage of the regatta.

For full results: http://mailchi.mp/nyyc/experience-runs-throughout-15-strong-fleet-for-2017-rolex-nyyc-invitational-cup-570485?e=91dffca147

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