Storm Trysail Club’s IRC Championship attracts notable 52-footers

by Barby MacGowan on 26 Oct 2010 Storm Trysail Club’s IRC East Coast Championship and five TransPac 52s that have been optimized for IRC are among the fleet of 27 IRC boats entered so far in the Storm Trysail Club’s IRC East Coast Championship set for a long Halloween weekend in Annapolis, Md. Joining the three Judel-Vrolijk 52s--Ennio Staffini’s (Annapolis) Anema & Core, Austin and Gwen Fragomen’s (Newport, R.I.) Interlodge, and Manouch Moshayedi’s (Corona Del Mar, Calif.) Rio - will be Richard Oland’s (Saint John, NB, CAN) Southern Cross-designed Vela Veloce and the Naval Academy’s newly acquired IRC 52 Invictus (nee Samba Pa Ti , a Botin Carkeek design).

The 52s will have to work hard to win against Dan Meyers’ (Boston, Mass.) Numbers, the professionally loaded Judel-Vrolijk 66 that is making a comeback on the East Coast and whose predecessor (Meyers’ 60-footer with the same name) won the event in 2006.

Locals and defending class champions Ed and Molly Freitag will be racing their brand new Summit 40 DownTime after its Annapolis Sail Boat Show appearance as the latest product from Summit Yachts. Scratch boat in their highly competitive IRC class (for boats in the 40-foot range) will be Pat Eudy’s (Charleston, S.C.) Big Booty, a Lutra 42 from Luctor Yachts in the Netherlands. Characterized as a 'junior TP52,' the boat should be good for an exciting performance. Also entered in the class, following a winning summer on the Great Lakes, is David and Sandy Askew’s (Annapolis) J/122 Flying Jenny IV.

The only dedicated IRC rating event on the Chesapeake, the IRC East Coast Championship was the IMS East Coast Championship before 2005. This marks the tenth year that the championship has been organized by the Storm Trysail Club’s Chesapeake Station and the sixth year it has been run under the IRC rule. The format of a distance race Friday followed by a weekend of windward-leeward racing has added to its popularity over the years. The Annapolis location is a late-season stop for big boats transiting from New England and heading to Key West and/or the Caribbean.

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