The annual Atlanta Council Commodore’s Cup is a Sea Scouts open council race typically raced in Capri 14.2’s and Catalina 22’s.  This year’s Koch Cup Qualifying races were conducted in Capri 14.2 day sailors for maximum competitive advantage.  The sailing area was part of Lake Allatoona where with nearly three miles of open water almost a mile wide with very light power boat traffic.  There were five Sea Scouts crews entered from five Ships from as far away as Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida and as close as two Ships from the local Council.  The racing was started early on Saturday morning with nine races throughout the day to determine a clear majority team holding.

The second race of the morning ended with a team from Florida capsizing and turtling a Capri 14.2.  After a brief delay the boat was righted and summoned to the dock for draining.  With the capsize drill out of the way, the racing continued until lunch time.

The nature of the Koch Cup team race experience was beginning to show with the two teams from the Gulfport area in Tampa starting to rack up 1^st and 2^nd places as a routine.  Third place was a toss up between another Tampa team and an Atlanta team.  Hard racing was the nature of the Sea Scouts event with the lead between the first two Gulfport teams trading 1^st and 2^nd nearly every other race.  It was apparent their keen skills and expertise were putting them in the lead for an invitation to the International Koch Cup in Galveston!

By days end, with nine races in the books, it was clear that one of the two Gulfport teams was going to be the winner and the second place team was there due to a one point total score difference!  It came down to just one race breaking the near perfect swap of 1^st and 2^nd nine race scores!  This was a great result and pushed the competitors to achieve their best in every race.

Good luck to our Southern Region’s newest Koch Cup team who will be the Florida and Area 9 Sea Scouts contenders for 2018 in Galveston!