Newport Harbor Sailing Foundation: Sailor Stories
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Michael Sentovich at the 2026 Rose Cup
Thank you to the Newport Harbor Sailing Foundation for the support at the 2026 US Youth Match Racing Championship for the Rose Cup held in Oyster Bay, New York, at Oakcliff Sailing and Seawannahaka Corinthian Yacht Club. 10 match racing teams, each consisting of four sailors, were invited to this year's Rose Cup sailed in Sonars. My team consisted of Myself, Colin Kennedy on Main, Conrad Cook on Jib, and Paloma Arrigo on Bow. This was my highest-graded match-racing regatta as a skipper, but I have done plenty of match racing as a bowman for the past few years, including sailing the Rose Cup twice before. I had no expectations going into the event, but I was super excited to learn more about match racing.
Rose Cup is a five-day event, with the first two days as a clinic and the last three for racing. Multiple-time US match-racing National Champion Pearson Potts led the clinic, and it was great to learn from him and get some practice against some of the best in the country leading into the event. The breeze, as expected in Oyster Bay, was up and down throughout the clinic, but it ended up being the best breeze of the week.
The first day of Racing started off with a brief postponement, then racing got underway with unstable three knots. Our first race couldn't have gone any better. In the little bit more than drifting conditions, we managed to get a crush start on our opponent and take the first race by a pretty good margin. Our next race wasn't as great as we lost to the eventual winner of the event. Then the breeze fully died for the rest of the day, and we got to enjoy a warm summer day with all the other teams.
Going into day two, almost every team had a 1 and 1 record so it was still all to play for. The forecast did not look too good for breeze, and it was expected to rain. We had a brief onshore postponement before RC sent us out. On the course there was absolutely zero wind and there wasn’t any sign of any coming later in the day. We had a brutal several hours of sitting out on our boats in no wind and a bit of rain. We ended up not getting any races off the whole day.
Day three finally brought some breeze and races. We ended up not completing a full round robin but we still completed six races and unfortunately, we only won one. A few of them were easily winnable but we made some costly mistakes. The match racing in general was very difficult compared to other regattas and practice I had done. The breeze was only about 5, very shifty, and very puffy; so, any pre-start or race that looked like it was going great could go wrong in a matter of seconds. One second, I could be well above the boat layline, and the next I might not even be making the pin.
Although the event didn’t go as well as I would’ve liked, I still learned so much about match racing and keelboat sailing in general, not to mention too that I had an absolute blast. I’m beginning to love it and I really hope to continue match racing both at the Rose Cup next year and in college. Again, thank you to everyone that made this event possible and I couldn’t be more grateful.