Seattle Skipper Wins U.S. Offshore Championship

ANNAPOLIS, Maryland一 Skipper Steve Travis from the Corinthian Yacht Club in Seattle, Washington came out on top at the 2021 U.S. Offshore Championship held in Annapolis, Maryland Sept. 24-26. There were eight teams from all over the county competing for the Lloyd Phoenix Trophy over the three-day event. The regatta kicked off with a buoy race and a distance race that had second-place Bob Fleck in the lead following by third-place Ensign Don Poirier from the Navy Offshore Sailing Team and Travis. Racing was interrupted on the second day due to a lack of wind but the breeze kicked back up for the last day allowing for two distance races. Travis and his crew took the lead in the final race of the day overtaking Poirier and the US Navy Sailing Team midway through to secure an overall win. “We had a decent start, and thought we had a good shift, and it turned out to be not such a great shift,” said Travis in an article from Scuttlebutt. “We rounded the mark in third, and the boat in front of us [Navy] took their kite down and put a jib up, which ended up being not the right thing to do. And then the lead boat jibed away, and when they came back were behind us. From there, it was just a reach to the weather mark. Then it was shifty, inside the harbor with 30-degree shifts…it was stressful to hang on… but we did it.” The Notice of Race required teams to have raced together in a minimum of five races and added a U.S. Naval Academy Midshipman to each team. The U.S. Offshore Sailing Championship is a biennial event with the winner walking away with the Lloyd Phoenix Trophy named for a US Naval Academy graduate who served in the Civil War.