Getting to Know the IC37
Here in the Pacific Northwest, we are fortunate to have relatively mild weather during the winter. While our Cascadia Sailing team has been out on the water a couple of times, we’ve taken the opportunity to do a lot of off-the-water work as well. One of those tasks has been a deep dive into the boat we will be racing next September in Newport, Rhode Island for the Women’s International Championship—the Mark Mills designed Melges IC37.
Mark Mills is one of the top designers of high-performance racing sailboats in recent decades, launching fleets like the Cape 31 and developing Classe Mini designs for the Mini Transat race, among many others. The IC37 was developed in close coordination with Harry Melges (a legend in the sport, responsible for popular fleets like the Melges 24 and 32) and Ken Read (another legend in the sport who has led North Sails for more than a decade). New York Yacht Club (NYYC) purchased 20 of the IC37s that were first launched in 2018. Only 35 have been built to date. Most boats are on the east coast of North America, Europe, or Australia, except for one boat—Westerly 37 is the IC37 currently owned by Cascadia’s Joy (& Stu) Dahlgren from Royal Victoria Yacht Club, and serves as the team’s training platform.
The design concept for the boat was to create a platform for “Corinthian” sailing (i.e., not professional), and the class has a rule that no more than one professional may race on the boat at a time. NYYC has a long history in yachting for its Invitational Cup, where other yacht clubs are invited to race in its fleet of one-design sailboats in Newport. (The IC37 replaced the ClubSwan 42 as the platform beginning in 2020.)
Most recently, the NYYC Invitational Cup for 2025 was an incredibly exciting regatta that featured on-board cameras and live coverage on YouTube. The PNW’s own Royal Vancouver Yacht Club finished 3rd in the 20-boat international fleet and were in contention to win it all right up until the last leg of the last race. Super close racing! Our Cascadia Sailing team interrupted our August training weekend to watch the exciting races, learn boat-handling techniques from the live footage, and cheer on the Royal Van team.
The IC37 is a planing hull, with a relatively deep draft of 8.2 feet. The boat weighs 7,793 lbs, which for a 37-foot boat is quite lightweight. The boat was designed to be sailed with simplicity in mind—there is a single asymmetrical spinnaker, minimal upwind sails (effectively a general-purpose J2 jib and heavy-weather J4 jib) and a large mainsail. Keeping the sail inventory simple reduces the racing costs for the fleet, which was one of the goals for the IC37 design to appeal to a wider range of sailors. Running backstays (rather than a single backstay) are an integral part of the rig tune and require a dedicated crew member. The boat has a mast jack under the mast and is the key mechanism for how the shrouds are tightened for higher wind speeds or eased for lighter wind speeds. Based on my observations, I feel like the IC37 is something between a J/70 and a TP52. The boat powers up, but can be slow to do so, and has unique attributes like a douse line for the spinnaker (like a TP52) that requires a lot of elbow grease. And like the J/70, there are no wind instruments.
For our Cascadia Sailing team, we’ve had to develop our own approach to sailing this powered-up boat. Most of the teams racing on the IC37 circuit in Newport use nine crew that are typically mixed gender. Our team is all-female with a lower average body weight, so we will be fielding a larger crew. In the practices we have had to date, everyone on the boat is active—our afterguard includes a tactician, runners, helm, main, jib trimmer, and kite trimmer. Our bow team includes pit, bow, mast, and floater, which is kind of a misnomer descriptor as this role is integral for making many tasks happen.
The IC37’s focus on simplicity means that the boat has no self-tailing primary winches, furling, or pretty much anything that could offer a helpful mechanical advantage. While we pride our team on being quite strong, we simply don’t have the brute strength of a 250-pound human to hoist and douse the 1,658 square-foot kite, which is similar to the size of a standard kite on a J/120, but on a boat that is half the weight. In effect, we’re having to engineer our maneuvers carefully to do the tasks as well or better as that “brute” would have done. We’re doing this with coordination and finesse—turns out that two people are quite often better than one.
Our most recent event was PSSR in Seattle, and we’re pleased and proud to share we came away with a class win. We will be continuing our training throughout the region over the next few months, and we would love to show you Westerly so you can see an IC37 up close and meet the crew. Please come by and see us!
