2023 Honorary Chairman: David Ryan, Jr.

I am honored and humbled to have been nominated as the 99th Mills Trophy Race Honorary Chairman. My sailing began in high school when I bought a 14’ Hobie Cat and learned to sail on the inland lakes of the Irish Hills. The summer following college, my father took me on a drive along Lake Erie’s southern shoreline, stopping into various boatyards and I found my first keelboat, a Catalina 27.

Cruising in the Catalina 27 “Elan”, I was soon introduced to racing aboard Dick and Ann Hamilton’s Pearson 26 at Sandusky Sailing Club in Sandusky Bay. I remember phoning Dick from work one afternoon because it was raining, and I was asking him if we were going to race that evening! He thought that was a pretty funny question. My first Mills Race was aboard Dick’s “Annie Also” in 1987, and it was that very race when I discovered a love of nighttime navigation and competition. Navigating was by dead reckoning with a wristwatch, compass and speedo (without today’s full color GPS or even Loran), all of a sudden the red flashing light of Starve Island Reef was directly in front of us and I was hooked.

While docking in a cold breezy rain at Put-In-Bay one day, I met Paceship-26 sailor Bill Loeffler from Catawba Island Club and became long-time dock mates with Bill on the starboard side and his nephew Tim McKenna on the port. My great dock mates have turned into lifelong friendships, and we energized a fun and entertaining CIC racing program featuring pursuit starts and a Cox-Sprague scoring system as well as a summer racing series named after Gordon Adams, the club’s first sailing Commodore.

At Monroe Boat Club, John and Michelle Glanville invited me to race Tuesday nights aboard their Cal 25 “Cherry Bomb” and we eventually co-founded the MBC Solo Challenge, which we think was Lake Erie’s first singlehanded race sponsored by a yacht club. I have served as MBC Sail Fleet Captain and was MBC Commodore in 2015.

Eventually buying a C&C 33 “Chasseur”, and currently racing with Jerry Porter on the J/105 “Relentless”, I actively race both short-course and longer distance races including BayviewMackinac, Trans-Erie Races, I-LYA Regatta’s and 34 Mills Races. I’ve been fortunate to have sailed the St. Lawrence Seaway as well as the Pacific, Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean and Adriatic Seas.

I’ve tried to assist sailors through years of volunteering at the club level and with PHRF-LE holding the current position of chairman. I’ve been a USSA principal race officer that needs to renew my certification and I am very privileged to have served competitive sailors in the region as a member of the Mills Trophy Race Steering Committee.

Each Mills Race holds a special place in my heart. The great crews I’ve been a part of, the everchanging Lake Erie conditions, the unmatched hospitality of the Toledo Yacht Club, PIBYC, and the graciousness of Race Chairman Ron and Kaye Soka make the Mills Trophy Race truly an icon of the Great Lakes and a race by sailors, for sailors!