Game time for NYYC Invitational Cup

Held biennially, the ninth edition of the Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup is ready with 20 amateur teams to race the club’s IC37s on September 9-13 in Newport, RI. The forecast 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, but with three consecutive podium finishes, culminating with winning in 2023, San Diego Yacht Club is at the top of the list of favorites for the 2025 edition.

“San Diego has done very well at this event,” says Jake La Dow, the team’s tactician in 2019 and 2021. “We want to keep building on that. We’re still hungry to keep getting better.”

Those could be ominous words for the other 19 teams with La Dow now taking over the helm from Tyler Sinks, with tactician Adam Roberts, main trimmer Rick Merriman, and core crew members Lucy Wallace, Nick Martin, and Max Hutcheson all returning from the winning 2023 crew. It’s a potent mix of experience and new blood.

Also eager to get better is Corinthian Yacht Club (Marblehead, MA) that finished second in its first Invitational Cup in 2023, and returns seven of the nine sailors from that team. The club has been on something of a tear of late winning the 2024 Global Team Race Regatta in Italy in 2024 and the 2025 Team Racing World Championship.

“We had a meeting at the beginning of the summer, and really just took a look back at things we did well, and things we needed to work on,” said returning skipper Wade Waddell. “We thought our speed outside in the ocean was something we needed to work on. And then just this idea that everyone’s getting better, every iteration of the Invitational Cup the level keeps going up. If we roll back to Newport at the same level that we were at in 2023, that might not even get us in the top five.”

However, the host club wouldn’t mind keeping their trophy, having not won since the inaugural edition in 2009. “It’s high pressure because there are going to be a lot of eyes on us,” says NYYC skipper Hannah Swett. “But the great thing about this team is that we’ve all done pretty high-pressure regattas. We’re going to be able to check it in a little bit; we’ll be able to handle it.”

Swett may be a first-time Invitational Cup competitor, but she’s a tremendously accomplished sailor, having competed in the 1995 America’s Cup and campaigned for the Olympics a handful of times. She and her team, including tactician John Alden Meade and main trimmer Dave Scott, have spent the summer aggressively sailing the IC37.

Up to 12 races are planned for either Rhode Island South, south of Newport, or in Upper Narragansett Bay, north of Gould Island. A live broadcast on Facebook and YouTube starts on September 10.

Event details – Results – Crew list – Tracking