BYC sails into Rose Cup finals

Christophe Killian, a Corona del Mar High alumnus representing Balboa Yacht Club, will compete for a repeat in the U.S. Youth Match Racing Championship on Sunday.

Killian, Harrison Vandervort and Jack Martin, the defending champions of the regatta also known as the Rose Cup, went 10-1 through 11 flights in the Round Robin stage to take the No. 1 seed into the quarterfinals on Saturday.

Balboa Yacht Club will go up against San Diego Yacht Club’s Scott Sinks, Andy Reiter and Storm Brown in the best-of-five final series.

“We’ve got the momentum, but that can turn off really quick,” Killian said. “Every day changes. We only faced [Sinks] once ... It was kind of sheer luck that we won.”

Killian’s only loss came to skipper Jack Thompson, along with Wells Drayton and Robert Garrett, of Newport Harbor Yacht Club.

BYC dispatched of the team skippered by William Curtiss from the Chicago Yacht Club, 2-0, in a best-of-three quarterfinals. Killian went on to defeat skipper Nicolas Sertl of the Rochester Yacht Club (N.Y.), 2-0, in the semifinal.

Sinks edged skipper Christopher Weis of Del Rey Yacht Club (Calif.), 2-1, to earn the right to challenge Killian on Sunday. Sinks was 8-3 in the Round Robin stage. San Diego defeated skipper Sean Cornell of Centerpointe Yacht Club (N.Y.), 2-0, in the quarterfinal.

The regatta, hosted by Balboa Yacht Club, takes place on the Pacific Ocean off Newport Beach. Racing begins at around 11:30 a.m. on Sunday

“We’ll be trying some new things, and we’re kind of looking at this as a practice for the Governor’s Cup,” Killian said. “But we definitely have our top goal to win. We’re looking forward to it.”

Killian and Sinks guaranteed spots into the 49th annual Governor’s Cup, as the Rose Cup’s top three skippers earn invitation to the international youth match racing regatta that is also hosted by BYC, July 20-25.

“We want to go and represent the yacht club,” Killian said of BYC, which has not won the Gov Cup since 1980. “We want to put in a win for them. We’ll be pushing hard.”

— Compiled by Steve Virgen