LYC Members Take Second in the Melges IC37 Class at the NYYC 175th Anniversary Regatta:The Lewis Team has begun it’s campaign with Bow 002 in the ground breaking Melges IC37 Class. 20 identical boats crewed by amateur sailors will race to qualify to represent NYYC in the Invitational Cup in September. The first qualifier is the Annual Regatta June 14-16. Chris and Karen are sailing with a number of Texas based J/105 sailors and have Olympic and Americas Cup helmsman and current J/105 NA Champion Terry McLaughlin on board as tactician.
The Lakewood team took second to Southern YC in the new Melges IC37 Class at the NYYC 175th Anniversary Regatta. See results here.
With Lakewood YC members covering helm, Chris Lewis and tactics, Danny Pletsch and Karen Lewis at Pit position the Texas based team Qubit led the regatta mid-week and finished second overall to John Lovell and Steve Benjamin, Southern YC who will be defending the Invitational Cup in the September.
Racing was super close in the fleet with the winner averaging worse than 5th place in a fleet of 21. Team Qubit overcame hooking a lobster pot off the start line and an over early on the last day to hold second overall. Sailing fast and keeping open lanes paid off for the Qubit team who put together a string of single digit finishes.
The IC37 marketed by Melges was conceived by New York YC in 2017 to replace the dwindling privately owned Swan 42 fleet used in the New York YC Invitational Cup, where yacht clubs from around the world qualify or are invited to compete. The boat is a pure one design, not dissimilar to the Laser concept with class sails, identical rig settings and very tight controls. Performing well comes down to pure technique and tactics. There are 31 boats made to date. 20 belonging to NYYC which are chartered and 11 privately owned in a growing class. The boat has just been adopted for the Canada Cup and there will be racing in the Solent next year. A Florida winter series has just been announced based at Pier 66, Fort Lauderdale. The great aspect of the class is that it is all amateur sailors except for one bona fide maintenance and delivery orientated boat captain. You also have the option to race in IRC events; Russel Peters won IRC class at Cowes Week this year in the first UK based boat. When Karen and I saw the opportunity to race these boats under charter we jumped at the opportunity and started working with Farley Fontenot to put together a team that could compete in the fleet. We pulled from J105 sailors that we knew and a few J44 sailors from Kenai. Over the season we initially had moments of success such as leading the Around the Island Race before a bad kite hoist and disasters including several self-inflicted kite failures. The Melges IC37 does not tolerate any kind of boat handling mistake in a fleet of 20 boats that’s are all moving at similar speeds. However, we also noticed that by sailing clean and fast large gains could be made. By the time we entered Race Week in Newport we had understood how to trim the boat by working the running back constantly when underpowered and then moving up to a mainsheet and traveler controlled trimming mode in breeze. Downwind you had to maintain at least 10 deg heel and minimize gybes. Recent Lakewood YC member Danny Pletsch called tactics and we took second place overall in an exciting event after throwing a 10 pt. overall lead before the last day when hooking a lobster pot on a first beat. Southern YC deservedly won and went on to place well in the Invitational Cup. Going into the National Championship we knew that we needed to gel as a team. With Danny unavailable we focused on “team”. Five of our nine sailors were Texas based. Ryan Glaze, Rush Creek YC of Gringo fame trimmed main. Jake Scott also Rush Creek YC called tactics and adjusted jib trim upwind when the jib trimmer was hiking. Carter Perrin, Texas Corinthian YC trimmed spinnaker, dowsed the 157 sq m kite (a single retrieving line that we called the FRL – it was a red line!) in just 7 seconds and worked with Jake on the upwind chess game. Karen Lewis nicknamed “Strings” ran the pit. The female crew was rounded out by two other sailors; Natalya Doris, NYYC, a College All American Women’s Team dinghy sailor learned the running backs over the season and Erin Spraugh, American YC, a west coast college coach learned to trim jib and span the spinnaker sheet winch down wind. Ryan Zupon, Larchmont YC was on bow coming off the Zartler’s LYC J105 campaign in Deja Voodoo. Our Boat Captain Alec Snyder was at mast. Alec had delivered Kenai and runs Summer Storm, a competitive Martin 49. He was not permitted to trim or call tactics by Class rules. Day 1 – A northerly shifty breeze filled in and with an average start we found it difficult to hold our lane. Working the shifts and ducking boats we pulled into a decent inside position further up the beat but again could not hold our lane. We finished 14th and I thought wow … the class has gotten better and we are a mid-fleet boat. We reviewed the issues post-race, backed down for weed and moved our jib car to the narrowest sheeting position and focused more on jib twist upwind. This paid off as we took a 3rd in Race 2 after competing for a 1st or 2nd spot at the top of the second beat. Day 2 – Sitting 10th overall going into Saturday we knew we had to average top 5 finishes to have any chance of a podium finish as a string of 5ths usually wins overall in the fleet. With a strong southerly we took 6th in Race 3 showing moments of great speed. In Race 4 we had a clean start with a lot of speed at the gun. Maintaining this speed with active main trimming through a nasty chop (not dissimilar to Galveston Bay) we rounded first and stretched to a dominant 1 minute lead at the finish. In Race 5 after a mid-fleet rounding we pulled to 6th with some very good downwind speed in the building waves. With our goal met we began knew Sunday was going to be intense with 5 boats in the running to win overall. Last day – Sitting in 4th overall and 8 points adrift from Members Only, sailed by Jay Cross, Hanna Sweat, Steve Benjamin and several AC Women’s sailors who had put together a dominant performance; we played heavy rock music going to the start. With Carter pulling off a tribal war dance we were pumped up. Alas, rounding 13th at the first mark we were buried. An early gybe and with some awesome down wind speed by working spin and main on every wave we took 6 boats on the run. Jake called a brilliant second upwind as we worked the boat continuously to round the top mark in 3rd. Gybing inside the 2nd boat we hauled it to the finish winning a buy a few feet on a well executed the turn down to the line! Race 7 saw us 4th on the last top mark on the stern of Members Only who now had a 6 point lead overall. After a drag race on starboard they fake gybed and sent us in towards the finish. However, the wind strengthened to 18 knts and we laid the finish surfing at over 16 knts to take 3rd with Members Only dropping eight places to 11th after over standing the gybe point in a tightly packed fleet. Now with a 1 point lead overall the north wind shut off and rotated east. We were potentially the Champions if Hank Stuart could not get a start in before 1500 hrs. But Hank, the top race officer he is, set a great course at 14.30 after two General Recalls, and aborted start with a 30 deg right shift and we finally started for real. Talk about intense! We came off the line boat for boat to windward of Members Only. For more than 1 mile we sailed on their windward hip preventing a tack to port. However, our inability to steer as well through waves by putting the bow down allowed them to eventually tack and cross. They led at the top mark and won the Championship. With a 4th place we concluded the series as up runner up, just two points adrift. Completing the season as the best overall scoring NYYC boat we are were proud to represent Texas and maintain the legacy of Texas teams competing at a high level in Newport, RI. A big thank you to my wife Karen without whom nothing would have come together, to Farley who helped us focus on team and to everyone who sailed with us. As in all things: the team is everything. If anyone is interested in finding more about the Melges IC37 Class, please feel free to reach out to me.
By Chris and Karen Lewis
