Detroit Cup draws some of the best sailors in the world

By Peggy Walsh-Sarnecki

August 3, 2014 at 8:03 pm Detroit

Australia’s David Gilmour and his Team Gilmour with Luke Payne and Peter Nicholas won the 2013 Detroit Cup Match Race.

Coming soon to Detroit – the stepping stone of the top match racing event in sailing after the America’s Cup.

Detroit Cup coming to Bayview Yacht Club Aug. 20 to 24 is one of a series of four match races that will send a team to the Congressional Cup in Long Beach next March.

“The Detroit Cup is an international match race. It’s part of a four-race series between Chicago, Detroit and two events in New York. It draws in teams from all over the world,” said Chris Van Tol, one of the Detroit race organizers and also a team captain. It will incude teams from the US, Australia, France, Ireland, Japan and Singapore.

The Chicago Yacht Club is hosting the Chicago Race and the Knickerbockers Yacht Club in Port Washington, New York is hosting one of the New York races.

The second New York regatta is hosted by Oakcliff Sailing in Oyster Bay New York. Former Harrison Township resident Dawn Riley, the first woman to be selected for an America’s Cup team, is Oakcliff’s executive director.

“This is called the grand slam series,” Van Tol said.

The 12 teams qualifying for the match series will race in Bayview’s U-20 boats.

The goal is to get each team to race each of the other teams once in a round robin format. The top four teams are go on to the next series and race each other. Finally the top two will race each other.

The team with the best aggregate score earns an invitation to the Congressional Cup.

Team captains need to qualify for the grand slam events. The top 100 ranked sailors automatically receive invitations. Other invitations may be sent based on a captain’s finishes the previous year.

Local sailors are well represented. Van Tol’s team includes his brother, John Van Tol and Michael Hoey, all loal. Matt Graham and Ian Hollerback are also local captians.

Hosting one of these match races is not easy, Van Tol said. It takes eight to ten umpires and a great many volunteers.

Bayview is also partnering with the local Big Brothers Big Sisters program. Teams will take a break from sailing Saturday to take 12 local children out sailing.

Competing teams include:

Ireland, Shane Diviney

USA, Dustin Durant

Australia, Sam Gilmour

USA – Matt Graham

USA – Alan Hollerbach

USA – Peter Holz

France – Pierre-Antoine Morvan

USA – Chris Poole

Japan – Wataru Sakamoto

Singapore – Maximillian Soh

USA – David Storrs

USA – Chris Van Tol.