April showers bring May flowers, but September showers, especially in New England, often leave behind a spate of dry late-summer perfection: crisp evenings, warm days and pleasant breezes. So, while no one was excited for yesterday’s three-hour practice race session on Narragansett Bay in the occasionally pouring rain, it seems a small price to pay for a week of great weather for the portion of the Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup that counts.
Today, all 20 amateur teams competing for Corinthian yachting's more prestigious trophy are on Rhode Island Sound for a second and final day of mandatory practice racing, with three Irish teams competing.
Tomorrow, at 11 a.m., the ninth edition of the Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup will get underway with the first of up to 12 races. The forecast for the week, with the rain now in the rearview mirror, is for mostly sunny skies, seasonable temperatures and predominantly light to moderate winds. It’s the sort of conditions where almost every team feels comfortable. That collective confidence, combined with the expertly maintained fleet of matched IC37s, means all teams tend to go the same speed and often arrive at the first windward mark en masse. It’s great for spectators, less so for the umpires and boatwrights who have to sort out the legal and structural ramifications of any incidents.
“You can sail your very best and still [have a few] small errors and you lose boatlengths,” said John Greenland, helmsman for the Royal Thames Yacht Club (at left) and a seven-time Invitational Cup veteran. “And once you're losing boatlengths and you're in the middle of the fleet, it's really hard to get out get out of the bubble. For us, we just want to make sure we do our best to keep things clean, especially in the first half of the regatta. Hopefully that sets us up as the event develops.”
