Three races into day two of the Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup, the leaderboard looks considerably more competitive than it did 24 hours ago. Royal Canadian Yacht Club has closed the gap on defending champions San Diego Yacht Club, and the fleet has reshuffled dramatically as conditions shifted from open ocean to the sheltered waters of Narragansett Bay.
The move inside the bay brought a very different challenge from the punchy 15-knot easterly and rolling six-foot seas that greeted competitors offshore on day one. Flat water, a strong current, and shifty breezes in the 14-16 knot range made for a thinking sailor's day. Teams that had done their homework on current patterns and wind shifts were rewarded; those who hadn't found the racing unforgiving.
Royal Canadian Yacht Club fell squarely into the first category. A 2-3-5 scoreline across the day's three races was the most economical performance in the fleet, allowing them to pull 10 points clear of the chasing pack while gaining a point on San Diego's lead. They now sit second overall on 25 points.
Main trimmer Scott Collinson explained what made the difference for the Canadian crew. "It was an interesting day," he said. "We'd done a lot of homework on that course. We really wanted to make sure that we understood what we thought was going to happen and it played out. Having conviction about what the current was doing and what the wind was doing was very important. And then we were able to get off the line fairly well. One start was amazing; the other two were pretty good and we made them work. We used our boatspeed to find our way to the top."
San Diego Yacht Club still leads the regatta and still flies the yellow spinnaker that marks them as the team to beat. Their second day was not without merit, opening with a race win and following with a second place. The problem was the final race of the day, where they slipped to eighth. After six races in total, they hold 20 points, just five ahead of the Canadians. The cushion is shrinking.
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Royal Thames Yacht Club claimed victory in the final race of the day, a result that lifted them to third overall on 35 points. This crew are past Invitational Cup finalists and their performance served notice that they still have plenty to offer. Their lead over fourth-placed Royal Vancouver Yacht Club is just 2.5 points, so Thursday's racing will matter greatly for both sides.
Royal Vancouver had a reasonably solid outing and added a third place in their final race of the day. After redress adjustments from day one were factored in, they sit fourth overall on 37.5 points.
The biggest drop of the day belonged to Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club. Having impressed with their consistency and downwind speed on day one, they came unstuck with a 3-20-4 sequence across the day's races. That 20th place in Race 5 proved particularly damaging, leaving them on 38 points and sliding from second overall to fifth. The gap back to Royal Thames is a mere half a point. Tactician Duncan Gregor had spoken confidently after day one about the crew's ability to recover from poor hoists and messy jibes, but day two showed there are still vulnerabilities to address. Six races remain and Hong Kong are far from out of contention, though the margin for error is narrowing.
One of the more uplifting stories of the day came from the Japan Sailing Federation team, who had endured a difficult opening day. They responded with a fourth and then a race win in Race 5. A 14th place in Race 6 took some of the shine off, but team principal Masuhiro Bamba collected the daily prize with evident pride. The win was a timely reminder of how quickly fortunes can shift in a fleet this tightly matched.
Royal Swedish Yacht Club continued to build their regatta quietly. Results of 11-2-5-7-9-6 across the first six races leave them sixth overall on 40 points. Skipper Johanna Sommarlund pointed to their downwind speed as the key factor, though she acknowledged work remains to be done upwind. "I really like the surfy, choppy stuff that we had today on the downwind," said Sommarlund, who developed her sailing skills as a top dinghy racer. "I think we caught up with two boats every downwind, so that was really good for us. The upwinds are tricky. So that's something that we will really have to work on, just fine tune the jib, fine tune the main. I found that the upwinds were much trickier than the downwinds."
New York Yacht Club, racing in familiar home waters, hold seventh overall on 47 points. Royal Cork Yacht Club of Ireland finished the day with a second place and have climbed to eighth on 49 points. Australia's Royal Prince Alfred, one of the youngest squads in the entire fleet of 20 teams from 12 nations, are placed 13th on 72 points. At the other end of the standings, Ilhabela, Italiano, and Itchenor continue to find the competition difficult and remain in the bottom five.
With exactly half the scheduled twelve races now completed, San Diego lead on 20 points, Royal Canadian are five behind on 25, and Royal Thames hold third with 35. Vancouver and Hong Kong complete the top five, separated by less than a point. Racing returns to Narragansett Bay on Wednesday, with the first warning signal set for 1030 EDT. No position in this fleet looks safe for long.
