Governor’s Cup sloop tours Newport Harbor

The Newport Balboa Sailing & Seamanship Association’s newly built 22-foot sailboat took its first spin around Newport Harbor on Saturday morning.

The fiberglass racing sloop is the first in a fleet of 12 boats that will be completed for the Governor’s Cup International Youth Match Racing Championship, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary in July.

The Governor’s Cup on July 15-23 will bring some of the most prominent young sailors from all over the world to Newport Beach to compete in a series of races pitting two boats against each other. The series will kick off at the Balboa Pier. Sailors are required to hit a mark in the ocean before circling back toward land.

“The race has produced some of the best sailors in the world,” said Andy Rose, chairman of the Governor’s Cup Steering Committee. Rose won the 1969 and 1970 cups for the Balboa Yacht Club.

The new sloops will be used by the 12 teams in the Governor’s Cup, as well as for fleet, match and team racing events by the Balboa Yacht Club and other sailing groups in Southern California.

The Newport Balboa association first commissioned a new fleet of boats for the race in 2002. However, with rapid advancements in boating and technology in the past decade, the group decided it was time to build again, Rose said.

It hired Santa Ana-based Westerly Marine to build the state-of-the art racing vessels, which will be finished this summer.

“We built an even more modern boat. This one is faster all around by a significant margin,” Rose said. “When we’re done, these will be some of the best boats in the world.”