Welcome to Team DEFIANT
Team DEFIANT, the Royal Canadian Yacht Club’s 2020 Canada’s Cup Defense Team. Continuing to build on the foundation of multiple successful New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup programs, along with past Canada’s Cup victories, Team DEFIANT represents the combination of our Club’s most successful and experienced match racing and Melges IC37 sailors. The co-ed, mixed-gender Team, is also composed of a selection of our Club's Olympians and marks RCYC’s return to premier Corinthian big-boat sailing, and the return of state-of-the-art yacht racing to the Great Lakes.
A Pathway for our Future
The 2020 Canada’s Cup will be a Corinthian format event, featuring a large selection of our Club’s best amateur sailors of all ages. The program is structured to provide a transitional pathway for future generations of successful, world-class big boat programs, thereby creating a solid legacy to build on for our Club’s future campaigns. The 2020 Canada’s Cup will run from September 18th - 27th at the Royal Canadian Yacht Club.
The Melges IC37
The 2020 Canada’s Cup features a new format along with the all-new Melges IC37. This new yacht represents the pinnacle of World-Class, Corinthian, one design racing available today. Being successful in the IC37 firmly marks your position on the national, continental and world stage.
A Member Unifying Campaign
The DEFIANT program unifies Membership and merges Club-wide racing and social programs into one proud, rallying support entity. Becoming a supporter of Team DEFIANT is becoming a member of the team. Supporter experience and social event schedules are being planned to take place throughout this historic Club event.
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DEFIANT, the Melges IC37
The IC37 was designed by Mark Mills, one of the most respected yacht designers of this era. Westerly Marine (Santa Ana, Calif.) and FIBRE Mechanics (Lymington, U.K.) are building boats to exacting specifications while Melges Performance Sailboats, the leading name in top-level one-design competition, handles the sales, marketing and class management.
The IC37 is a moderate displacement keelboat that is fun to sail and accessible to the majority of amateur sailors of both genders – in fact, having a coed crew is a class rule. The IC37 is in its true element fighting tooth and nail for inches on the racecourse.
specifications
LOA: 37.06 ft
LWL; 33.95 ft
Beam: 11.94 ft
Draft: 8.20 ft
Ballast: 4,092 lb
Displacement: 7,920 lb
DISP/LEN Ratio: 90
The Canada’s Cup
Past, Present and Future
The Canada’s Cup originated as the prize trophy awarded to the winner of a challenge match held between Chicago’s Lincoln Park Yacht Club’s Vencedor and the Royal Canadian Yacht Club’s Canada in 1896. The match was hosted almost midway between the two yacht clubs at the western end of Lake Erie at Toledo, Ohio. (Site of a somewhat less friendly encounter 86 years earlier at nearby Put-In Bay during the War of 1812).
After Canada prevailed in a two-race series, the trophy was deeded by the winning syndicate to the RCYC for perpetual match-racing competition between Canadian and U.S. yacht clubs bordering the Great Lakes, making it emblematic of the world’s premier freshwater yacht club.
Over their 124 year history, the matches have been held under a variety of measurement rules, with a trend to one-design offshore racing yachts in the current century, thus emphasizing racing tactics and precision crew work over the sometime vagaries of the yacht designer’s drafting table.
The summer of 2020 will witness the 15th match of this historic series, with the RCYC defending its current hold on the cup in the waters off Toronto Island against challenges from Youngstown NY and Rochester NY. The matches are to be held in virtually identical Melges IC37’s, with the defending syndicate expected to charter two boats in order to hone its boat handling to the sharpest possible edge in its endeavour to retain the cup and thereby narrow the cumulative U.S. edge in victories from two to just one. By agreement, future matches are expected to be held in two years, and again in 2024.
