Sail Sheboygan hosted the US Sailing Team Race Championship during August 2016, where the top teams from the U.S. battled for the historic George R. Hinman Trophy. Team Trouble, comprised of Charles Higgins, Johnny Norfleet, Matt Allen, Gabe Smith, Isabel Strachan and Team HDSailing’s, Arielle Darrow, was able to make a crazy comeback during Sunday’s knockout rounds and therefore was able to win the Hinman Trophy.
Arielle said, “We definitely struggled through the Qualifying Series round robin on Friday. We were trying to 
get a handle of the boats, Zim 15s, and how to react to each other’s plays and mark traps. At the end of Friday, we were ranked seventh and our spirits were pretty low. We then came back with a vengeance because we won all four of our races in the Silver Round Robin so we could advance to the Knockout Series Quarterfinals.” Team Trouble beat Jet Lag, 2-1, in Quarterfinal and then went on to defeat BOSS, 2-1, in the Semifinal. Team Trouble then went on to defeat Mostly Grad Bods.
“There was a lot of craziness to whether we won or not, because time ran out due to the wind shutting off, so we could not complete the final race between Mostly Grad Bods. The race committee scored the event applying rule D4.7 to the results of the incomplete Semi Final knock-out series. Days of Thunder then requested redress claiming that sailing instruction 8.3 required that 79% of a stage be completed for that stage to be counted for scoring purposes, and in fact less than 79% of the Semi Final stage was completed. The redress was at first granted and that made Team Trouble go from 1st place to 4th place. Our team felt that that granted redress was not appropriate for the ruling, so we filed an appeal to US Sailing. After we waited and waited for a response, we finally got it! US Sailing Appeals Committee 
disagreed with the redress and therefore we were reinstated as the winners.” – Arielle
The win has now qualified Team Trouble to represent the U.S. at the 2017 Team Racing World Championship. The team also hopes to apply and get a position to compete for the Wilson Trophy, in the UK during May 2017.