The 2025 YRA Awards Party Held at Richmond Yacht Club

Many sailors spend the year on the Bay trophy hunting, but for the YRA, the season championship trophies aren’t handed out until the yearly November YRA trophy party. The trophy “pickup” party was held Saturday afternoon, Nov. 22, at the Richmond Yacht Club. The room full of winners, with supportive crew and guests, comes by to pick up the loot and be recognized for all their accomplishments across the year. To congratulate them all you’d have to attend the trophy party, but we recognize the event and some winners here.

Latitude 38 joined YRA executive director Laura Muñoz, YRA board chair Joe Rockmore and event chairs in awarding prizes to the gathered winners.

In attendance were winners of the Offshore Series, Doublehanded Racing Series, Destination Regattas, and Offshore and In-the-Bay Series. The YRA and respective event chairs produce and organize the racing along with partner clubs for everyone’s varied interests in racing.

The event occurs as Latitude 38 and the YRA are in the middle of creating the 2026 Northern California Racing Calendar. The calendar usually contains over 900 individual Bay Area races that are all permitted by Laura Muñoz’s work with the US Coast Guard. This includes the many YRA series, plus all the individual club races.

There’s no shortage of opportunities to get out racing in the Bay Area, from quick one-hour evening beer can races to destination races to Vallejo, Half Moon Bay, Benicia and many more. The biggest reward for everyone is just being out on the Bay, and then there’s the chance to end up at the year-end trophy party picking up some additional recognition for success.

Latitude 38 awarded the Wosser trophies, created by Ron Young in 2021 to help support growth of participation in racing on the Bay.

First up was the Jake Wosser Trophy for the largest one-design regatta held on the Bay. The winner was Hayden Zieger of the California Yacht Club. Hayden won with the 51-boat Opti PCCs run by the San Francisco Yacht Club.

The Ruth Wosser Trophy goes to the boat that raced the most YRA-sanctioned race days in a year. This year’s winners were Christian and Diane Kramer, racing 58 days aboard their Alerion 28 Sweet De. They edged out Samantha Chiu, who raced 57 days this year aboard her Open 5.70 Altair.

The Susie Wosser Trophy for taking the most crew racing during the year went to Rick and Petra Gilmore on their Catalina 42 Revelry. This year they took 65 different people out racing with them!

As YRA board chair Joe Rockmore said in his remarks, the best way to grow participation in racing is for those who do race to race more often, or take more people out racing. The Wosser trophies support that mission.

This year was the first year of the YRA Women’s Championship Series. The series of three races requires participating boats to have a woman skipper and tactician, and at least 50% of the crew must also be women. For many years, Latitude 38 has also been awarding a Queen of the Women’s Circuit to a woman skipper who participated in the many women’s events and encouraged more women to skipper and crew.

This year it want to Elizabeth Henderson and her J/105 Chinook crew. They attended almost every women’s regatta on the Bay that was open to them, including Island Yacht Club’s Sadie Hawkins, SFYC’s Anne McCormack Women’s Invitational, Encinal’s Shirley Temming Cup, Sequoia’s Rock the Boat Again Regatta, and the YRA’s Women’s Regatta. Plus they supported both the Island Yacht Club and Corinthian Yacht Club women’s sailing seminars.

Skipper Elizabeth Henderson was supported by a skilled all-female crew consisting of Claire Perhach, Tracy Ward, Gwen Holst, Shelli Bohrer, Mayim Weins, Kira Maixner, Andrea Guthrie, Julie Kim, Wrye Sententia and Jessica Wang.

As the YRA board chair said, everyone can help grow participation in 2026 by inviting more boats and more crew to race, and helping those who’ve never tried racing to get signed up and sailing. If you do that you could also end up winning a Wosser trophy, even if you never win a race.

See you on the water.