At the end of July, myself (Jack Egan), along with Jack Plavan and Diego Escobar, made the trip up to Newport Beach to compete in the prestigious youth match racing invitational known as the Governor's Cup. We had earned an invitation to compete in this event from our second place finish in the Rose Cup this past June. The Governor’s Cup would present many new challenges, including new boats (being the Gov Cup 22s which were specially designed for the regatta), new formats, and new competitors, including a handful of international ones.
As aforementioned, the regatta has custom boats, which are designed for typical Newport Beach conditions, those being calm seas and 6-8 knots. Unfortunately for us and our relatively light team, this was not the case. The whole event was hosted in 12-16 knots with considerable sea states, and seeing the boats didn’t have depowering tools like a backstay, this presented us with some problems. Besides that, the wind provided for some great racing and awesome spectating. After two full round robins, we were tied for 4th. The format provided for the top 4 boats to move onto the final four and the remaining to compete for the rest of the places (6th-10th.) Due to the head to head record, we lost out on the tie breaker, which was disappointing for the team. That being said, we were happy to know that we are right in the mix with the best youth match racers in the world.
This event was definitely one of the coolest my team and I have ever competed in. The media surrounding it and the new sailors from thousands of miles away make it a really special experience, and we came out of it with a new place to stay in Sweden! We would like to take this time to thank the competition fun and the whole SDYC membership for enabling us to compete in this competition, and we look forward to taking another swing at it next year!
