Sixteen Years Between Phone Calls

In 2010, my daughter Cori raced the Herreshoff Trophy for Tabor Academy — and I wasn't there.

I got the news by phone, at a distance, piecing together the races from what she could tell me. You know how that goes. The moment only exists for you as a reconstruction, and you spend years filling it in until you almost feel like you were standing on the dock. Some news hits harder that way, not softer.

Cori — listed by Bowdoin as Corina Radtke — is on Bowdoin College's sailing coaching staff now. Just two weeks ago in St. Petersburg, Florida, her Polar Bears women's team finished 4th at the college Women's Fleet Race National Championship, behind Stanford, Yale, and Harvard, in an 18-team final. There's a line from that Herreshoff phone call to that result, and I think about it more than I probably should.

So when eighteen qualifying high school sailing teams from across New England showed up at Hyannis Yacht Club on May 9 and 10 to race for the O'Day Trophy, I was not going to hear about it secondhand.

The O'Day is the NESSA Fleet Racing Championship — one of New England high school sailing's major championship trophies, and a qualifier for the Mallory Trophy national championship in New Orleans. It came to Hyannis YC at 490 Ocean Street, to Lewis Bay, where half of Cape Cod's young sailors first learned to tack. It's run in 420 dinghies — small, physical, unforgiving. The southwest wind doesn't give you anywhere to hide out there.

Saturday opened hard: a building southwesterly topping 15 knots with higher gusts, six races per division before the day was done, three protests filed, a DSQ, and a contested redress hearing after a collision where one boat's mast ended up locked between the forestay and mast of another. Anyone who has crewed a 420 in that kind of pressure can picture exactly what that scene looked like at the mark. Sunday came in SSW at 7–9 knots — softer, but still work — and six more rounds in each division.

Twelve races total per division. Two full days. Off Hyannis Yacht Club.

When the scores were added up, Barrington High School's Eagles had won it — 80 combined points, 33 in Division A and 47 in Division B across the full series. That kind of steadiness over two long days in a field this competitive doesn't happen by accident. St. George's School finished second at 110 points; Brunswick School came third at 117. Those three earned berths to the Mallory Trophy nationals in New Orleans. Barrington took the O'Day for the first time.

Greenwich High School posted the best Division A score in the entire fleet — 38 points across 12 races — but couldn't hold it in Division B and finished 5th overall at 162. Greens Farms Academy was the quiet story, slipping into 4th at 160. Dartmouth came 7th, Tabor 8th.

Two local teams made the field. Yarmouth High School's Clippers raced to 12th overall with 267 points. Cape Cod Academy's Seahawks finished 15th at 298. They were racing against programs that have been sending teams to nationals for decades. Getting into this field means you qualified. Lasting two full days in this company means something else.

Hyannis YC ran this event twice over: they hosted one of the five regional qualifying regattas on April 26, then organized the championship itself on the same water their youth sailors have been learning on for years. That's not nothing to pull off.

Full results at scores.hssailing.org.

The O'Day Trophy is on its way to Barrington, Rhode Island. The Yarmouth and Cape Cod Academy parents know what their kids did. And somewhere between a 2010 phone call from Sippican Harbor and a result sheet from St. Petersburg, a Tabor parent who missed one moment too many is proud of every kid who rigged a boat on Lewis Bay.

Final Standings — 2026 NESSA O'Day Trophy May 9–10 · Hyannis Yacht Club · Full results: scores.hssailing.org

Hyannis Yacht Club | 490 Ocean St., Hyannis | 508-778-6100