Eastern Connecticut. Est. 2013.
That was ten kids on a dock in Mystic. MudRatz is now three teams, ages 8 to 23, racing Optis, 420s and offshore boats around the world.
Get involved
Families, alumni and the coaches themselves keep MudRatz on the water, season after season. Swipe through the ways in, then pick yours.
The log book
Thirteen seasons, one page at a time. Pick a year, or let it turn on its own.
MudRatz began when ten junior sailors, unhappy that summer sailing had ended, met on a dock in Mystic to keep sailing. Early support came from the Eastern Connecticut Sailing Association and the Mystic River Mudhead Sailing Association.
A spring season ran out of New England Science & Sailing, after a fall that drew more than fifty sailors across thirty-plus Optis and six 420s. Dave Perry ran a rules clinic for the kids only.
MudRatz created and hosted the first Secor Volvo Fishers Island Sound Race, a junior distance event run by the program itself.
A Melges 24 was donated, sailed its first season that May, and raced the Melges 24 Worlds in November. The program stopped being a dinghy team that travelled and started being a keelboat program.
The Secor Volvo race became the first junior sailing event anywhere to earn Platinum Level Clean Regattas certification from Sailors for the Sea, meeting 70 of 75 best practices. Sailors ran a beach cleanup on Fishers Island and wrote to their congressional representatives. A second Melges 24, Equal Opportunity, launched to get young women skippering.
The Swan 48 Dreamcatcher, coached by Taylor Walker, won Class 5 of the St. David’s Lighthouse Division at the 51st Newport Bermuda Race, taking the Alfred E. Loomis Trophy, and won the Stephens Brothers Youth Division Trophy. The dinghy race earned Platinum a second time and drew 51 teams aged 12 to 18. Sailing World sailed a night training run with the crew that summer: Into the Night.
US Sailing awarded MudRatz the Captain Joe Prosser Award for excellence in sailing instruction. Two more keelboats were donated, taking the program to eight boats, and an 11th Hour Racing grant, awarded through the program’s Ambassador Anderson Reggio, funded GreenFlash, a youth-written sustainability plan. Dreamcatcher took second in class in the Marblehead to Halifax Ocean Race.
The J/105 Mad Blue joined the fleet and became the boat most MudRatz sailors learn keelboat racing on. The team logged podium finishes across regional events, including the RS North Americans and the C420 New Englands, and Head Keelboat Instructor Peter Cronin campaigned Mad Blue in the 238-mile Vineyard Race.
Aboard the Farr 45 Spitfire, the offshore youth team finished the Newport Bermuda Race in 3 days, 7 hours, 22 minutes and 54 seconds: first youth team across the line, 26th overall of 188 boats, and an unofficial Stephens Brothers youth division record that beat the 2016 mark by more than nine hours. The team also won the William Tuthill Collegiate Trophy at the Ida Lewis Distance Race, and coach Lindsay Gimple was selected for an IMOCA Globe Series team for the Route du Rhum.
A definitive class win at Block Island Race Week with the fastest PHRF time in the fleet. Highfield Boats North America came aboard as an official backer of the coaching fleet, and coach Cole Brauer led her class in the Bermuda 1-2 solo offshore race and launched her Global Solo Challenge campaign.
Coach Cole Brauer finished the Global Solo Challenge, becoming the first American woman to race solo, non-stop and unassisted around the world. Coach Lindsay Gimple trained and competed for a place at the Paris 2024 Olympics, MudRatz sailors earned invitations to the elite US Sailing Youth Racing Camp in Miami, and Mad Blue wintered at Fort Rachel Marina in Mystic, keeping the big-boat pipeline alive.
Optis, 420s and an offshore team, ages 8 to 23. The After Dark program takes sailors out of the harbor at night to learn tethers and navigation in the dark. Still 100% volunteer driven.
Who taught them
Working professionals from the America's Cup, SailGP, The Ocean Race and two Olympic Games have coached MudRatz sailors. One autumn the magazine came sailing with us instead.
Partners
Home base for our offshore team in Mystic, and in our book one of the best service yards in the area. Time and again they go above and beyond for the program, and the kids get on the water because of it.
Our fall home for the past ten years. An extraordinarily supportive community for youth sailing, and for racing of every kind. We are lucky to have them.
An incredible asset to the whole community. NESS bridges the gap between sport and learning in a way that is genuinely fun and creative, and every one of our members has benefited from it over the years.
This program would not be possible without the support of a much wider circle: 11th Hour Racing, the Mudheads, the Eastern Connecticut Sailing Association, the area yacht clubs, the team at McMichael Yacht Yards & Brokers and Jeff Marshall in particular, our industry partners Pettit Paint, Samson Rope and Harken, and the dozens of boat donors who trusted us with their boats and let us give them new life. Those boats now teach kids to sail and carry the program forward.
Latest news
Since 2013
Our dinghy race was the first junior sailing event anywhere to earn Platinum Clean Regattas certification, and it did it twice. The sailors ran the beach cleanup and wrote the letters, not the adults.
On our boats junior sailors take the helm, call tactics and rotate through leadership roles. That is unusual in youth big-boat sailing, and it is the point.
US Sailing's Captain Joe Prosser Award recognizes excellence in sailing instruction. MudRatz received it as an organization, which for an all-volunteer program is the one that counts.
The second Melges 24 was named and funded to get young women skippering and holding leadership positions, not just filling a rail.
Of the original ten, half were racing at collegiate level within five years and the rest were still sailing in high school.
Nine donated keelboats, from a Melges 24 to a Swan 48, all of them sailed by teenagers rather than sold off.
Drawn from published reporting and official results. If you spot something wrong, tell us and we will correct it.
Support the Ratz
Almost every boat the MudRatz sail was donated. If you have a boat you are thinking about donating, talk to us and we will tell you honestly whether she fits the program.
Why volunteering matters to us today
“The professionalization of youth sports—the incursion of for-profit companies is strip-mining American childhood”
MudRatz is a 100% volunteer driven organization.
MudRatz Inc. · A 100% volunteer driven organization
