Newport Harbor Sailing Foundation: Sailor Stories

Match Racing Summer for Morgan Pinckney

Dave Perry describes it as the “Match Racing Bug”, and once you have it you can’t shake it. Since my first match race five years ago, I have had the bug. This summer I initially intended to do a few events, as I was participating in two finance internships and attending the London School of Economics, but when US Sailing gave me the US berth at the 2025 Youth World Match Race Championship, I decided to go all in.

Unfortunately, the way my schedule lined up, Youth Worlds happened to be my first event. I was a little rusty going into the event, but my team was stacked with good sailors and more importantly, good friends. Kelly Holthus and Cam Spriggs joined from SDYC, along with Sammy Hemans and Peter Barnard (Chicago YC). We were sailing five-up, making us heavier; many other teams were sailing four-up.

We arrived in Gdynia, Poland a day early to get used to the time change. We did a little bit of sightseeing, and I couldn’t help but feel the Soviet historical presence ingrained into the culture and architecture. Poland was a Communist country in 1989. The next day it was time to get to business. One of my biggest challenges was that, after a long day on the water, I was completing my virtual internships in the evenings. In the round robin series, we struggled. All the Europeans had access to the RS21’s, so their boat handling and speed was much sharper than ours. But we managed to squeak our way into the quarter finals. We were up against the #2 seed British team. We narrowly lost the first two races in the first-to-three series. I would like to think that was a purposeful tactical decision to make the Brits overconfident. We decided to tweak some boat handling and speed things. We tried out something new. My dad who was there coaching us noted that the Brits were sailing the boat with much more heel. So as a last ditch effort we tried sailing the boat with more leeward heel and it worked. We managed to win three races in a row and advance to the semi finals.

In the semis, it was two American teams and two French teams. We were against the French who were about 200 pounds lighter than us, and the eventual champions who sailed a beautiful regatta. In the two races we sailed, we beat them off the line but due to the painfully light air they slowly ground us down and passed us. Then the breeze entirely shut off and there was no more racing. That meant we finished fourth which I believe our team was happy with. There were 15 other teams that consisted of the best U23 sailors in the world who had more exposure to the boats and match racing.

There was no time to even debrief as we had to red eye back to BYC to race in the Governor’s Cup the next day. I arrived at LAX at 1am and within a couple hours I was racing again. Kelly, and Cam remained and we were joined by Alice Schmidt from SDYC - again sailing with an additional person at max weight, while most teams were three-up. Conventional wisdom says you’re supposed to sail right on weight in match racing.  Rough is an understatement for how the team felt that first day. But we kept it truckin’ and ended up second in the standings after the first day. The subsequent days of the double round robin were similar in terms of conditions - light and tricky. However we secured our spot in the semi-finals again. We won the first race of the series against Justin Callahan and were winning the second race, but our mark slipped on the spinnaker halyard so we sailed a considerable length downwind with our kite about four feet down. That mistake cost us the race and we were tied 1-1 going into finals day. 

Finals day was light and tricky again and Callahan made better side calls than we did which allowed him to win the series. This meant we had to race the Petit Finals against Josh Hyde of New Zealand who is the current #1 world youth match racer. The whole team was bummed about our prior mistakes, but Coach Dad managed to talk us into a better headspace. We managed to get the best of Josh in the prestart and maintain our lead in every race. That led us into our third third place finish in the Governor’s Cup. It was not what we wanted but still a respectable finish.

There was not much time to dwell on our mistakes because Kelly, Cam and I had another redeye into New York for the Oakcliff International, where we met my new teammates Will Glasson (St. Francis YC) and 505 sailor Drew Buttner. Unlike the other events, the International is not a youth event. This invitational event, part of the “Grand Slam” was stacked with pro teams competing on the World Match Race Tour - the best match racers in the world. In addition to that I had never raced a 40-foot boat with a wheel (Oakcliff Match 40’s)! When we arrived at 8am from the airport to rig the boat to go racing, I had few expectations. I quickly learned that I like racing boats with wheels because, miraculously, we went undefeated. We defeated the top three ranked teams in the world. It also happened to be my 21st birthday, so it went down as one of my favorite days of sailing. We kept our momentum up and somehow won the round robin. We took it one race at a time and won the quarter finals.

However, something changed in the semis, the wind came up to 15+ for the first time. Being a bunch of inexperienced college dinghy kids, we were outclassed and that cost us the regatta win. But we learned from our mistakes and brought those lessons into the petits final four. We managed to win both races of the petits which meant we finished third overall. I suppose old age and treachery ends up beating youth and enthusiasm. 

For the next event, The Thompson Cup, I was thrilled to have match racing legend, mentor, and friend Dave Perry join us. The first couple days of the event were very light and difficult. We were still learning how to sail the boats, had mostly new crew, and it was definitely very helpful to have Dave on board. Overall, the event was a mixed bag of results. We finished 5th at the end of the round robin, but we had picked up some momentum in the last half of the round robin. Unfortunately, due to the wind or rather lack of wind, we could not complete a quarterfinals. We learned a lot of lessons and I am grateful to have had Dave on the boat.

Due to some last minute complications, I sailed with an almost entirely new crew in Chicago for my final event of the summer. Thank you Peter Barnard, Jimmy Prendergrast, Peter Foley and Addie Fischer! We had one practice day on another new boat, the Tom 28, and things were still rusty. It definitely showed the next day in the first races of the round robin. However, we gained more coordination and started winning races at the end of the round robin. Not only did we make the quarter finals, but we were the fifth seed - not bad for a new team.

Unfortunately, #1 seed Peter Holz decided to end our young-whipper-snapper groove, as he chose to race us in the first match of the quarter finals. He had home court advantage, and a seasoned team. We were not quite sharp enough and he managed to take us down 3-0. It was an unfortunate end to our summer, but we took away many lessons from the event that I will take forward at future events. Next up is qualifying for the College Match Race National Championship.

This was an amazing summer and it would not have been possible without the support of many people. I would like to thank the Newport Harbor Sailing Foundation for its support of my Grand Slam efforts and participation in the Youth Match Race Worlds. Thank you to my crew who committed time to sail with me. My last thank you goes out to my parents for their continued support!