Kennedy Cup

I have two words to describe Friday racing, shifts and current. It seemed like each upwind had a new favored side of the course with the wind moving off of the land. The current was a different story. It was consistently pushing every boat into the marks. Boats struggled to call relatively short lay lines with how much current was pushing them into the marks going upwind. All these factors made the day very interesting to watch. As we move into the weekend we expect the races to get a little less exciting and the sailors shifting to their light wind mode. Friday finished with Navy in the lead with 8 points and NC state doubling their score with 16 points.

It was very great to see the wind hold out with similar conditions to Friday racing minus the wind direction. The crews had a more familiar northerly breeze on Saturday which created a more favored side of the course. Many crews opted to utilize the current relief that could be found on the left side of the course upwind and the right side to ride the current downwind. This shifted a bit by race 7 with the wind beginning to die and shift right. By the time race 8 came around, RC was forced to slice the course distance in half and shift the course axis by over 30 degrees. Race 8 finished with a remarkably tight group of boats for the fast changing wind conditions. Saturday ended with a huge shakeup in the rankings with the top team being Maine Maritime with 31 points. The top 5 teams are all within 7 points of each other after 8 races! It will be exciting to see if the conditions hold out to set a team clear ahead on Sunday.

I'm very glad we were able to make race 9 happen with the conditions Mother Nature gave us. As we motored out to the race course, we saw more of the wind speed we were familiar with from the weekend in the 10-12 kt range. As the first warning went off, that wind had dropped to a generous 6-8 kts, but sailable. At the start, a small group of the fleet saw the massive lee from a anchored tanker blanketing half of the course and tacked out toward the right side and made their way out there. Among these was boats was NC State who established their lead very early at the start line and ended up carrying that throughout all of race 9. The other boats rounded the first windward and leeward marks without a problem just before the forecasted lull set in across the whole course. The lee of that tanker from earlier did not go away, but got much longer downwind making the entire left side of the course unsailable. Boats that chose the left gate struggled to get out of that side and fought the current for much of the rest of the race. NC State maintained their lead and rounded well ahead of the rest of the fleet and started their downwind leg with the last of the sailable wind for the day. Behind them, was Navy, Charleston, and Maine Maritime. These 4 boats fought their way through the barely present breeze towards the finish line, while the rest of the fleet continued to try to get around the last windward mark. NC State secured their bullet, followed by Navy and Charleston. Maine was short of the finish line when the time limit expired.

Throughout the regatta there were 9 2pt penalties accepted (listed as DSQ), 1 DSQ (Fleet+1), and 7 TLE's in race 9 (listed as DSQ or RDG)

The 2026 Kennedy Cup Trophy was presented to the Navy Midshipmen, breaking a 15 year gap in the team's name on the trophy. The team earned 34 points earning their spot on trophy. The Maine Maritime Mariners were shortly behind with 35 points earning their spot on the Lt. Jeff Stanley Memorial Trophy. The North Carolina State University Wolfpack finished in third place with 37 points.

The following chart shows the relative rank of the teams as of the race indicated. Note that the races are ordered by number, then division, which may not represent the order in which the races were actually sailed.

The first place team as of a given race will always be at the top of the chart. The spacing from one team to the next shows relative gains/losses made from one race to the next. You may hover over the data points to display the total score as of that race.