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What became the Royal Lymington Cup match race event was started in the mid-Seventies by a group led by Californian sailor and Lymington yacht builder Bill Green in open admiration for and imitation of the Long Beach YC’s Congressional Cup, then well-established as a training patch for would-be America’s Cup helmsmen and tacticians. Indeed, for the first few years of its existence the competition was simply known as ‘The Lymington Congressional Cup’. The name was changed when the present trophy was donated. The competition attracted not only the best match racers of the day but also the top international officials and the Royal Lymington Cup was amongst the first to have on-the-water observers who evolved into the on-the-water umpires now used to decide boat-v-boat protests and to award penalties on the spot rather than having matches re-scored and on-the-water results reversed late at night after lengthy protest hearings. Among the winners of the Royal Lymington Cup are Thierry Peponnet, Marc Bouet, Sir Russell Coutts, Peter Isler Rod Davies, Chris Law, Chris Dickson, Peter Gilmour, Iain Murray and, the skipper whose name appears most often on the trophy, Harold Cudmore.
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