First time in race history that Special Olympics run their own boat
ST. MARY’S CITY, Md. (August 4, 2010) — For the first time in history, Special Olympic sailors will skipper their own vessel in the St. Mary’s College of Maryland Governor’s Cup Yacht Race. Athlete Ben Collins (Rockville, Md.) and skipper/partner Todd Croteau (Edgewater, Md.), will sail a Morgan 41 Classic, Voyageur, with a crew of other Special Olympic athletes and partners. The race, which begins in Annapolis on Friday, August 6 at 6 pm, runs overnight down the Chesapeake Bay and finishes on Saturday morning at the College’s River Center in St. Mary’s City.
Collins, who is legally blind and cognitively impaired, has sailed with Croteau since 2000. The Governor’s Cup race is not new to them; they’ve sailed several times as crew aboard Donnybrook, a Santa Cruz 70 (PHRF AO class) yacht owned by Jim Muldoon, CEO of METCOR and outgoing Chairman of the Board of Trustees at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
Voyageur is a non-spinnaker PHRF N class yacht, which is one of the most popular classes entered in this year’s race, along with the PHRF A1 and PHRF A2 classes.
The race can be tracked by computer thanks to a new GPS system offered this year. The GPS displays the race in real time, continually tracking the location of each boat by name throughout the race. Viewers can follow online by going to the embedded player on the Governor’s Cup web site at http://www.smcm.edu/govcup/ .
This year marks the 37th running of the race from Maryland’s current capital city to its first capital in St. Mary’s City. The Governor’s Cup is the oldest and longest continuously run overnight race on the Chesapeake Bay.