Photo: Catapult wins the Bacardi Cup in J70 Class © Martina Orsini/ Bacardi Invitational Regatta
The 92nd Bacardi Cup Invitational Regatta completed on Saturday March 9th with most classes completing 3 days of racing. Each day brought 10-18 knots of breeze, short chop, and insane shifts from 075-130 degrees. In the J70, Catapult was very consistent, rounding out the regatta with 16 points and no races kept outside of podium finishes. Powered by Doyle One Design’s M2 Main and J8R Jib, Team Catapult was able to keep the advantage throughout. Congratulations to Joel Ronning (owner/driver), Victor Diaz de Leon (tactician), Patrick Wilson (trimmer), and Chris Stocke (bow.) Joel Ronning said of this team,
“This was a very fun team to sail with. We all got along very well. This group of people is very good at what they do. We had tremendous fun, we were able to minimize mistakes by keeping the dialogue open and if there were any issues, they were taken care of right away.”
Finishing second place in the J70 Class, Team Surge was podium through the entire event with the same toss out score as Catapult of an 11th. Surge is powered by Doyle One Design’s M2 Main, J8R Jib, and S10 Spinnaker. Congratulations to Ryan McKillen (owner/driver), Mark Mendelblatt (tactician), John Wallace (trimmer), and Sam Loughborough (bow.) Ryan McKillen said after the first day of racing, “Beautiful day out there today for yachting in Miami. We had a good day, a seventh, a first, and a fourth. Our third Miami event, all of the Bacardi and then we snuck in the J70 Midwinters two weeks ago, so we did a lot of sailing in Miami this winter.”
We were also excited to see Woodstock from Mexico in 5th skippered by Fernando Gutierrez and Mr. Pitiful from Seattle in 6th skippered by Kevin Downey, both with full Doyle inventory. Great sailing, guys!
This Doyle 1-2 Punch is reminiscent of the J70 Midwinters two short weeks ago, where Relative Obscurity’s Peter Duncan and Midlife Crisis’s Bruce Golison took the top two spots. At this event, these two teams split the bullets – Duncan winning 5 races and Golison winning 4 of the 9 total races. Doyle One Design is happy to have our customers winning every race of an event.
