Awesome Storm Trysail College Big Boat Regatta

by J/Boats on 13 Oct 2017 Over 360 college students from the United States, as well as international teams from Canada and France, participated in the 2017 Storm Trysail Foundation’s Intercollegiate Offshore Regatta (IOR).

Conditions for the regatta varied between 8-10 knots of breeze on Saturday to a slightly more rugged 18-20 knots with higher gusts on Sunday. Sunday’s more-challenging conditions led to two crew overboard situations. In the first instance, the Grand Valley State crew on the J/109 Morning Glory – under the guidance of long-time Storm Trysail Club member and boat owner Carl Olsson - initiated a successful recovery maneuver while sailing downwind. In the second instance, one of the two safety boats swiftly picked up the crew person who had fallen off of the J/105 ELMO. Both were recovered quickly and unharmed.

Barry Gold, Chairman of the event, said “In spite of some of early Saturday pea-soup fog and intermittent rain on Sunday, we had two days of fantastic racing, with steady and increasing breeze. With a few well-timed postponements and relocations, the race committee gave the teams five competitive and fun races. We want to thank The Corinthians, who started the Corinthians Intercollegiate Regatta in 1983 and ran it until 1999, for transferring their original four perpetual trophies to the Storm Trysail Foundation. These four beautiful trophies bring together the initial regatta with its later reincarnation by Storm Trysail, and begin new traditions for the competitors. The re-dedicated trophies were presented to class winners this year for the first time along with two perpetual trophies donated by Larchmont Yacht Club.”

Boston University took home the overall honors and the “Paul Hoffmann Trophy” in the hotly contested J/105 class on YOUNG AMERICAN with four bullets and a second place in the second largest class in the regatta. ECHO, crewed by Vanderbilt University (a first time entrant to the regatta), took home second place in the J/105 class by edging out Drexel University on FAIRHOPE with a tie-breaking first in the third race. Robert Alexander and Peter Becker received the “Ed du Moulin Trophy” awarded to the boat owner/syndicate of the overall winning team.

In the J/44 class– which by tradition is a generally an all-service academy class– was won by Maine Maritime Academy on Gold Digger, closely followed by the US Coast Guard Academy sailing their own GLORY, just one point ahead of last year’s overall winner, the US Naval Academy on MAXINE.

The University of Rhode Island ran away with the J/109 Class with four firsts in five races on Emoticon. Taking second was Morning Glory sailed by Grand Valley State University and Tulane University on GROWTH SPURT rounded out the class podium.

There were three PHRF classes. In PHRF 2, the University of Michigan on the J/133 placed third. Then, in PHRF 3 the J/88 WINGS with the University of South Florida aboard took second and Roger Williams University on the J/92 THIN MAN took third position.

Erica Vandeveer, Captain of the victorious Virginia Tech squad, is a Behavioral Psychology Major and sees the relevance of big-boat sailing, “communication is critical to being successful on the race course. We had some challenges but we were able to talk and work through them to win.”

Juliette Joffre, captain of the Club Voile EDHEC Business School team who came all the way from Lille, France declared, “this is a big, serious and very competitive regatta.”

Marianne Pierres, another member of the EDHEC crew, described how offshore racing is similar to business, “the starts were really exciting, and so was the broach! But you have to manage and keep calm; you have to understand roles and do your job.” Juliette continued “There is a lot of pressure to perform at your best, but I know that the team is much closer now because of this experience.” This was their first time at the IOR, and they had to win an international student regatta in France for the right to come to the IOR with an all-expenses paid trip through a partnership between the Storm Trysail Foundation and the EDHEC Sailing Cup.

Thanks to the high-quality list of sponsors, some private donations, and the generosity of participating boat owners, Storm Trysail Foundation and Larchmont Yacht Club were able to run the regatta at no cost for the college sailing teams!