Dirigo Cup

DIRIGO CUP 

The cup, a silver urn 22 inches tall without its base and decorated with leaves and berries, was a baseball trophy for a company team in Chicago in the 1930s.

 In 1975, Walter J. Goes donated the Dirigo Cup to the Yacht Club as a perpetual trophy to be awarded in Class E to the winner of the Series B season championship. He chose the name for the cup and for his own Class E scow after the 314-foot four-masted merchant ship whose captain in the early 1900s was Lewis S. Colley, Walter’s maternal great grandfather. Commissioned in 1894 by Arthur Sewall & Company Shipyard in Bath, Maine, and launched in the Kennebec River, Dirigo was the first steel-hulled sailing ship built in the United States and had ports of call in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. “Dirigo,” Latin for “I lead,” is the motto for the state of Maine. The cup, a silver urn 22 inches tall without its base and decorated with leaves and berries, was a baseball trophy for a company team in Chicago in the 1930s. Goes found it in the early 1970s in a store in Linton, Wisconsin, where it was being used as a vase, and had it repaired and resilvered. It is engraved The Walter J. Goes Perpetual Trophy, The Dirigo Cup, with the names of its winners. In 2015, the Yacht Club added a wood base to accommodate additional names.

1973  Walter Goes

1974  Bob and Jane Pegel

1975  Walter Goes

1976  Clayton Gaylord

1977  not  sailed for

1978  not sailed for

1979  Jim Smith

1980  Jim Smith

1981  Jim Smith

1982  George Kiefer

1983  Brian Porter

1984  Charles Colman

1985  Mike Kurzawa

1986  Bob Harring

1987  Howard Ferguson

1988  Steve Lyon

1989  not sailed for

1990  not sailed for

1991 not sailed for

1992 Jim McGinley

1993 Gene Wittenstrom

1994  Steve Schalk

1995  Steve Schalk

1996  Bob Youngquist

1997  Jay Wittenstrom

1998  Steve Schalk

1999  Wendell Sherry

2000  Wendell Sherry

2001  Wendell Sherry

2002  Wendell Sherry

2003  Ken Wruk

2004  Steve Schalk

2005  Ken Wruk

2006  Scott Ripkey

2007  Steve Schalk

2008  Steve Schalk

2009  John D. Simms Jr.

2010  Charles Colman

2011  Charles Colman

2012  R. J. Porter

2013 R. J.  Porter

2014  Steve Lyon

2015  Thomas Freytag, Fireball

2016 R.J. Porter, Full Throttle

2017 R.J. Porter, Full Throttle

2018 Kyle Navin

2019: Kyle Navin

2020: Kyle Navin

2021: Kyle Navin

2022: Kyle Navin

2023: Steven Lyon