Megan Grapengeter-Rudnick and Team Vigilant won the New York Yacht Club’s first Women’s International Championship on Saturday, finishing 23 points clear of the field after a week of racing out of Harbour Court.
Newport’s Hannah Swett took third, moving onto the podium in the last race of the regatta. Swett opened the final day by winning the eighth race, stumbled to 13th in the ninth, then fought back from deep in the fleet to finish seventh in the closer — enough to pass Canada’s Sarah Douglas, who finished fourth by a single point.
“Going into the final day with eight boats that could get on the podium, we just had to do well,” Swett said. “In our first race, we did really well. Then, boy, did we have a shocker in the second race. But then the third race, we played the shifts, and credit to my whole team for keeping the boat going. It was a very hard day. But we ended well.”
Michelle Lahrkamp and the Fair American team finished second, with only one finish outside the top 10 across the 10-race series. “Our team is a full Corinthian team,” Lahrkamp said. “I think what really brings us together is how hard we work and how well we mesh.”
Grapengeter-Rudnick’s team was close to untouchable through the first seven races before posting its worst finishes of the week on the final day — sixth, seventh and 10th — in a dying breeze. It didn’t matter.
“When we started the project, the goal was to win this event,” said Stephanie Roble, Team Vigilant’s tactician. “Over the last few years, we really focused so much on the process of becoming the best version of ourselves in order to show up here and be the best.”
Australia’s Katie Spithill was fifth, the top finisher from outside North America.
At the awards banquet on the Harbour Court lawn, Dominique Provoyeur and Team Granate RSA, who traveled from Cape Town, received the Helly Hansen Sportsmanship Award. Grapengeter-Rudnick, Joan Porter, Mariah Millen and Laura Donaghy won the Palm Beach XI Training Scholarship, which includes a trip to Australia to train aboard a 100-foot yacht.
Twenty teams from 14 countries sailed the club’s IC37s. The next Women’s International Championship is scheduled for mid-September 2028.
