
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.”

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 1 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 1sts 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.”

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! The sponsors include Rolex, North Sails, Gill North America, Safe Flight Instruments, Flintrock Construction, and Dimension-Polyant. For more Storm Trysail College Big Boat Regatta sailing information Add to Flipboard Magazine.