This past June, three of my friends and I competed in the 2019 Youth Match Racing Championship, commonly known as the Rose Cup. We were excited for many aspects of it, first and foremost it was hosted by SDYC and would be raced at city front, which made everything surrounding the event much easier. Also, it was a reunion of sorts, as “B” Lindsay who had moved to Florida almost ten years ago, was back for the summer. Jack Plavan, Matt Dorgan, and I all grew up sailing with her so it was very cool to have us all four on a boat together. For me personally, I was also very excited as it was my first major match racing regatta as a skipper.
The event itself had a lot of ups and downs. All the competitors were met with challenging match racing conditions; light, shifty, and waves coming from every direction. We started well, qualifying into the top half of the bracket after the round robins and some well fought wins. Unfortunately, our streak did not continue and we began to make some silly mistakes which saw us lose in the first round.
Although the result was not what we were looking for, we came out of it with many new lessons and some much needed experience for being a beginner team. I and the others on the boat are already excited to give it another shot next year in New York and use what we learned to hopefully improve our result. We would like to sincerely thank the competition fund and SDYC membership for their continued support of our sailing.