2025 Season Champs Extra Part III: SSS Doublehanded Monohull

With the February 2026 edition of Latitude 38 out now, the “Season Champs” feature is officially wrapped up. We received so many submissions from the winners of different fleets this year that we didn’t have room for all of them in the print magazine, so over the next few weeks we will be posting in ‘Lectronic Latitude the submissions that we couldn’t fit into the magazine. Today we are focusing on Sergei Podshivalov and Frank van Diggelen, who won the SSS Doublehanded Monohull division aboard the Sunfast 3300 Sun Dragon.

“We started the season well, by being among the few finishers in the TBF; SSS points are computed from finish position/number of starters,” van Diggelen tells Latitude. “Also, every shorthanded race is a mini-fiasco anyway, so we love starting the season in the 300-strong TBF fleet. We had the usual ups and downs through the year, generally counting it a success if we corrected out close behind Gordie Nash in his Mull/Nash 27 Arcadia.”

“Before the final event, all of the top three were in contention for the season victory,” van Diggelen says of the close racing this season. “We felt our chances of an overall win were pretty much hypothetical, but we had to compete anyway to defend our second place, under threat from five different boats. Luckily things went our way — and we’ve learned to keep racing to the very end.

“We bought Sun Dragon to campaign her doublehanded,” van Diggelen tells us of the team’s goals with the boat, “with our ultimate goal being ocean races. We’ll start our first Pacific Cup in July 2026. Follow us on YT “sunfastcam;” see your own boat from our 360 camera. And enjoy an original song and soundtrack: ‘The Three Bridge Fiasco Blues.’”

You can read the final print edition of the “Season Champs” feature in the February issue of Latitude 38, and you can find the first two parts of the 2025 “Season Champions” feature in the December and January issues.