Regatta Namesakes

McCarthy Cup

According to the accounts of former UT sailors Scott Young and Tripp Alyn, McCarthy Cup was named for John McCarthy, a J-24 sailor from Canyon Lake. John McCarthy was a major donor who helped the UT Sailing Team acquire its first fleet of 420’s in the early 1980’s. 

It was around 1982 that the UT Sailing Team came to the realization that they could no longer patch together the old 420’s that were factory rejects (following a fire) from the old Plastrend plant. These boats were jointly used by the UT Sailing Club back in those days and the boats were kept at the Highland Lakes Marina.

At the time, there was a lot of talent on the team, but very limited facilities. Most practices consisted of literally duct taping the boats back together. One weekend, some UT sailors were sailing J-24’s at Canyon Lake when Scott Young shared with John the difficulties they were having.  After about ten minutes of conversation, John volunteered that he would guarantee a loan for the UT Sailing Team to buy a new fleet of boats. 

With this loan, the UT Sailing Team was able to purchase eight new 420’s from Vanguard. Once the boats were ordered, Brinkley Morse and Scott Young met with the Austin Yacht Club to see if there was any way the new boats could be stored at AYC as opposed to the Highland Lakes Marina. 

AYC was kind enough to provide the team with floating docks to store the boats and allowed the team to use their race committee boats. They importantly also provided the UT Sailing Team with a special membership status that made it feasible for us to be able to afford to operate out of the club.

However, this boat deal left the UT Sailing Team in quite a bit of trouble with the university. UT administration promptly let the team know that they could not use equipment on behalf of a UT Club Sport that was not owned by UT.  Borrowing money to purchase the boats without UT’s involvement was not going over well.  In fact, UT Sailing Team leadership was told that UT had no choice but to purchase the boats from John McCarthy (since technically the boats were in his name), and if they didn’t raise the $20,000 to pay back UT within around six months to a year, UT would take back full possession of the boats and they would be given to the UT Sailing Club (meaning that the UT Sailing Team would no longer have access to them).

The team was able to raise the money needed after an aggressive fundraising campaign and pay UT back. The team leadership at the time was importantly also not kicked out of the university, as was threatened by administrators.

The team still owes a great deal of gratitude to John McCarthy, who took a chance on a promising group of young sailors and helped finance a fleet of boats. This is why the team named a regatta after him, and it is still an annually hosted team racing regatta that occurs in the spring semester. It is hosted by the UT Sailing Team on Lake Travis