For the Record-

Last Wednesday I posted a picture and report of some of the Genuine Risk crew holding the Pineapple Cup, at the time mistakenly thinking that we had somehow met the criteria for winning it and that the committee had sanctioned the photo's. While we did end up winning the Cup (see the criteria from the committee below) it was unproffessional of me to post this prior to the committee's deliberations and formal awarding. My apologies to those who understood my post to equate an official communication from the Race Committee, as it certainly was not.

SORC Sailing- For the race competitors and fans that would like to know the process by which the Race Committee arrives at the decision on who to award the overall trophy - the Pineapple Cup - to, please read on.

Judging the comparative performance of boa...ts in IRC and PHRF fleets is difficult, but not impossible, but even if the overall winners of both the PHRF and IRC divisions had valid ratings in both systems, using each ratings schemes' "Corrected Time" to determine an overall winner would never be valid, because each system creates Corrected Time in fundamentally different ways. For comparison's sake, while Donnybrook beats Genuine Risk based on each system's Corrected Time figure, Genuine Risk destroys Donnybrook on IRC using their existing TCC of 1.434 - by about a day - and Donnybrook would end up in sixth place in IRC under that system.

Because these ratings systems create irreconcilably different results, the Race Committee must necessarily look at the competition each division-winning competitor faced.

Genuine Risk faced three other maxi boats in IRC 1, the 100' Rambler100 (well represented with most of the Puma Ocean Racing Volvo 80 team), Beau Geste (a gorgeous new design with Gavin Brady running the show), and Bella Pita, a Tripp 75. Genuine Risk pushed these three all-star carbon rockets to their limit, and beat them all. Risk beat all of IRC-2 as well, including the IRC East Coast Champion and a Ker 46 from Holland that completely embarrassed her IRC competition a few weeks ago at KWRW with a skipper that has been winning major IRC events in Europe for more than a decade, and who recently won Seahorse's "Sailor of the Month" award at something like 90 years of age.

Donnybrook dominated the four boats from the PHRF fleet that also finished before the time limit expired. Those competitors included three 40-footers and a Santa Cruz 52 that rated more than a minute per mile slower than Donnybrook. So while Genuine Risk won a class that included a larger, newer, faster boat and several other similarly sized boats - all loaded with talent from the upper echelon of the sailing world - Donnybrook faced an extremely talented PHRF fleet, but no boats similar in size or performance.

Objectively, the Race Committee decided that a boat that defeated a stacked class of newer boats with similar performance expectations turned in a more outstanding performance than a boat that beat four boats to the finish, none of which were remotely close to her speed, and a handful of boats that could not complete the course within the time limit for doing so.

We want to congratulate EVERYONE who completed an exceptionally challenging Pineapple Cup. There are people throughout the competing fleet who exemplify the best traits our sport has to offer; people who are humble in victory and gracious in defeat, and have accomplished more than their share of both victory and defeat.

But there was only one team that delivered the best overall performance on a monohull, and that team was Genuine Risk.