2025 Season Champions — December Edition
As Thanksgiving passes and November turns to December, there are many annual traditions that must be observed. Holiday decorations go up, you will be forced to listen to Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” several thousand times, and at Latitude 38 we will be highlighting the season champions from various fleets and yacht clubs.
Latitude’s “Season Champions” feature is an annual tradition in which we briefly highlight the sailors and boats that won their various season championships throughout the course of the year. With this feature, we hope to highlight as many champions as we can, starting with the first 10 featured here. More season champions will be featured in the January and February issues.
J/105 — Blackhawk, Ryan Simmons, SFYC
The biggest one-design fleet on San Francisco Bay was won by a familiar name in 2025. Ryan Simmons and his team on Blackhawk (SFYC), winner of four of the past six Rolex Big Boat Series (runner up this year), won the season title.
“We entered the 2025 season with the utmost confidence; we had ended last season winning our second consecutive Big Boat Series and four of the last five, returning with five of six of our long-term crew,” Simmons tells Latitude of the team’s season. “What a wonderfully humbling sport sailboat racing is! We opened the season with a 12th and 18th place in our first two races, more points than we’d accumulated in seven races at RBBS. It was an immediate reminder how hard it is to win in this fleet. Fortunately for team Blackhawk, that would be our low-water mark for the season.”
“We were able to start putting some more consistency atop the scoreboard as the season went on,” Simmons continues. “What is probably the best stretch we have ever had, over a 25-race stretch we finished outside of the top three only twice, once due to an exploded spinnaker and subsequent shrimping. True to form for the J/105 fleet, RBBS proved to be a battle, and we found ourselves in eighth place at the end of day one. Full credit to the crew for staying positive and committing to our system; we worked hard and finished with a proud second-place finish in the RBBS and locked up the season championship.
“Off the water, this was also a celebratory year for us: Kristin and I welcomed our daughter, CC Simmons, in early July,” said Simmons of exciting off-the-water happenings. “Further enforcing the fact that I have the best and most supportive wife, I was on the water racing in the July regatta 10 days later.”
“Our core crew this season was Brent Draney, Nico Colomb, Collette Zaro, JR Rosenlicht, Jeremy Herzog, Jon Rosen and Lindsay Browne,” Simmons continues. “Sailing with us at times we welcomed Liz Pino, Jessica Brownlow, Rex Cameron, Scooter Simmons and Blaine SooHoo. Next year is going to be our 20th season as a member of the J/105 class, and it is currently as exciting, competitive and cohesive as ever. A member of our local fleet has won the North American Championship five of the last six years, only one of which was contested in San Francisco. With a regular 25+ boats and six sailors on board, the fleet is always looking to add to our crew lists. If interested check out the website www.sfj105.org.”
Continue here to read about the J/24 Tenacious Cuttlefish; ILCA 6 with Toshinara Takayanagi and Ernie Galvan (RYC); the West Coast Sailing Grand Prix ILCA 7 won by Al Sargent (StFYC), and more.