For the third time in four years, Steve Liebel’s New Wave team stood atop the podium at the IC37 National Championship, sailed this past weekend out of the New York Yacht Club Harbour Court in Newport, R.I. This year’s edition marked a high point for the one-design keelboat fleet, with a record 26 teams competing in the largest IC37 Nationals to date.
“It’s a big number out there, 26 37-foot boats that are identical,” said Liebel. “We all get to that windward mark at the same time. It’s very exciting, and it’s very rewarding.”
New Wave wasted no time asserting control—winning the opening and closing races, staying out of the bottom 10 in all but one of the eight races, and ultimately winning by 19 points. Among the 26 teams, only six avoided at least one finish of 20th or worse.
The key to their success? Continuity and crew work.
“More than half our team has sailed together for probably 40 years,” Liebel said. “And the other four, we’ve sailed with 50 times, 80 times or 100 times. We have one new youngster on our crew that has switched in. It’s his third regatta, but we’re really fortunate that we have a great crew. They know what to do, and that’s the difference.”
“That’s how you turn a 24th into an 11th,” he added. “The crew work, the boat handling, the weight movement, the little tweaks, make all the difference in the world. I’m very lucky to have such a great crew. There are nine very, very good people on our team. And it shows.”
The battle behind New Wave was fierce. Wade Waddell’s Pegasus finished second, followed closely by Hannah Swett’s MO, Chris Lewis’ Qubit, and Clinton Hayes’ Gloriana. Just nine points separated second from seventh place.
“It was good,” Waddell said of the runner-up finish. “But it felt like we did it the hard way.”
Pegasus, representing the Corinthian Yacht Club in Marblehead, Mass., used the event as preparation for the Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup this September.
“Every iteration of Invitational Cup, the level keeps going up,” Waddell said. “If we came back into Newport [this September] at same level we were at in 2023, that might not even get us into the top 5. We’re looking at all the fine details of how we get 5 percent better, having this idea of striving for excellence and not thinking that we got second last time and that’s good enough.”
Nine Invitational Cup entries, including teams from Ireland, Great Britain, and Canada, used the regatta as a tune-up.
While the IC37s grabbed the spotlight, the club also hosted the inaugural NYYC Coastal Races Regatta and the 69th Queen’s Cup, with boats racing under ORC and PHRF handicap rules. Victor Wild’s Fox swept the weekend in ORC 0, winning both the two-day Coastal Races Regatta and Sunday’s Queen’s Cup.
“We have a lot of [specialty] sails that we’ve been working on for a lot of years,” said Fox tactician Andy Horton. “Some events, the way that they’re scored, we don’t always put all of these sails on our certificate. This weekend, with the format being coastal races with a lot of cool courses up and around the bay and lots of corners and legs, there was high potential to use those sails. We haven’t had that opportunity since the ORC Worlds here last year.”
“We always like to make it a little complicated and push the group,” he added. “So we had a couple days of training. Most importantly, it’s the people you have. We just have a great group of guys who have all been with us at one regatta or another, some of them five or six years with the team.”
Temptation/Oakcliff and Jax rounded out the Queen’s Cup podium. Jax also won ORC A, while Brian Cunha’s Irie claimed victory in the PHRF division.
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