West Coast I-14 Fleet Takes On ABYC Turkey Day Regatta
On November 22 and 23, Alamitos Bay Yacht Club (ABYC) hosted its annual Turkey Day Regatta. The event featured one PHRF fleet and a staggering 14 one-design fleets, most of which were dinghies. Among the many dinghy fleets was the 10-boat I-14 fleet, which has been working hard to (re)grow the class recently.
The West Coast I-14 fleet is fast-paced, competitive and welcoming, and is actively looking to recruit new members. The fleet even employs a relatively unique strategy to get new racers on the starting line.
“The USA I-14 class here on the West Coast has been pushing to grow the fleet and seriously train for the upcoming 2026 World Championship in Kingston, Ontario,” regular I-14 sailor and Northern California fleet governor Patrick Wilkinson tells Latitude. “There are modern, competitive boats available for sale and fleet-owned loaner boats that make it easy to join the fleet and compete with the best in the world.
“The Turkey Day Regatta at ABYC is always a fun one to get you in the mood for the holidays,” Wilkinson continues. “The club puts on a beautifully catered smoked turkey Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday night, and the winner of each division goes home with a full-size turkey. This has been one of our highlight events for the I-14 class for a couple of years now, and this year we had a nice turnout of 10 boats, including one new I-14 owner, Lucca Ferrel from Marina del Rey.”
Wilkinson, a Richmond Yacht Club (RYC) sailor, sailed the Turkey Day Regatta with Chris Henderson of the Corinthian Yacht Club of Seattle (CYCS), and finished fifth. The duo recorded second-place finishes in races two and three.
“Saturday was a typical fall day in Long Beach, with a morning easterly that clocked south and died, only allowing for one light, tricky race,” Wilkinson tells us. “Sunday brought a nice southerly sea breeze of six to 10 knots, and along with it extremely tight racing [within] the 10-boat fleet.”
The regatta was ultimately won by SDYC’s Brad Ruetenik, who won races two through five after finishing fifth in race one for a net total of four points (each boat was allowed one drop). Behind Ruetenik was the SCYC team of Mikey Radziejowski and Evan Sjostedt with a net total of 12 points. The duo finished second in races one and three.
The podium was rounded out by Cameron Puckey and Max Roth (sailing for SDYC and RYC respectively), who also had a net total of 12 but lost on the tiebreaker by one point. Puckey and Roth had third-place finishes across the board until the final race, in which they finished sixth.
While the competition among the teams is fierce, the best aspects of the West Coast I-14 fleet include its dedication to growing the fleet and the attitude of working together to get faster as a collective.
“As a newer sailor to the I-14 fleet I enjoyed the camaraderie between teams; before and after racing each day we all talked about what we found to be fast or not,” the aforementioned Roth tells Latitude. “Something that I’ve come to love is how much everyone helps each other go faster, sharing tuning notes, working on sail designs and foil shapes together, while still being fierce competitors on the water. As someone who’s spent a lot of time on keelboats recently, it was nice to be back in a skiff going fast. Bill Lee’s saying of ‘fast is fun’ still rings true, and these boats are the epitome of fast and fun. Being a part of such a tight-knit fleet is very rewarding and makes the racing on the water even more fun.”
It’s a Ho-Ho Caption Contest(!) for December
With the Christmas season upon us, we’re wondering if this is Santa’s new sleigh. Looks like a good upgrade. There’s to be no more arguing among the reindeer about who gets to lead, and he wouldn’t have to carry around bags of hay to feed them.
Drop your caption into the comments below-ho-ho …
Check out November’s Caption Contest(!) winners in the December issue of Latitude 38: Loose Lips
Yacht Charter Placement with Modern Sailing
America Not in Next America’s Cup
It feels as if interest in the America’s Cup has been slowly ebbing since Oracle Team USA’s amazing come-from-behind victory on San Francisco Bay in 2013. It appears headed for a new low, as the only possible US challenger, New York Yacht Club’s American Magic, has decided not to race in the 38th America’s Cup. At present the only two teams confirmed for the summer 2027 event are the defender, Team New Zealand, and the Challenger of Record, England’s Ben Ainslee-led Athena Racing.
“After extensive engagement with the Defender, Challenger of Record, and fellow teams, we’ve concluded that the present structure does not provide the framework for American Magic to operate a highly competitive and financially sustainable campaign for the 38th America’s Cup,” said Doug DeVos, team principal of American Magic. “We care deeply about the America’s Cup and what it represents. However, for a team committed to long-term excellence, alignment around financial viability and competitive performance is essential. At this time, we don’t believe those conditions are in place for American Magic to challenge.”
American Magic still has a foiling base in Pensacola, Florida, where it plans to maintain its involvement in high-performance racing and will continue developing athletes, technology, advanced manufacturing and participation in international events. This could include a team in SailGP, and they are involved with bringing the new ClubSwan 28 to market. They also plan to continue their support for international racing campaigns and supporting US Olympic sailors.
Obviously, America has been central to the America’s Cup since it first took the Cup home to the New York Yacht Club after John Cox Stevens won it in 1851. The foiling era has raised the cost and shifted the allegiance of former America’s Cup fans. The modern Cup has gained some new followers with its high-speed thrill-seeking classes, but it’s lost a lot of the traditional fan base. While we’d love to see America win the Cup again, we’d also love to see the event held in sailboats with sailors running around the decks hoisting and trimming sails.
Beyond the defender and challenger of record, three other teams appear possible, including Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli (ITA) and K-Challenge/Orient Express (FRA). There’s a slim chance America could get back into it with a challenge from Riptide Racing. One hopes Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli will get in so they can race in their home waters of Naples, Italy.
In our own biased view, one of the big hopes we have for international sailing events is that they gain attention from the non-sailing public in a way that inspires more people to take up sailing. Measured against popular video bloggers, local sailing schools, community sailing programs or the Golden Globe Race, we’d guess the America’s Cup and SailGP are far behind in attracting new sailing participants. The events make money by having spectators, not sailors, so growing the number of people sailing is very low on the priority list.
We don’t have any evidence, but we’d guess the era of 12 Meters did attract more new sailors than today’s foiling events, but we have to admit, the data would be hard to come by.
P.S. American Magic’s announcement came out at the end of October, and we’re afraid it didn’t really catch our attention until just now. Are we the only ones who missed it? How many of you are trying to keep up with the America’s Cup?
Coyote Point Yacht Club Hosts Ad Hoc Sunday Race #3
There are November days that feel like a small grace note before winter, and this was one of them — warm, clear, and mild enough to make you forget the calendar. The forecast promised five knots, but the start served barely two. Still, with a high tide slipping toward a gentle ebb, seven boats gathered with the good cheer that naturally comes as Thanksgiving approaches.
Out came Chablis IV, Lorelei, Paradigm, Surprise!, Sweet Grapes, Vita e Bella (returning triumphantly after tending to her battery woes), and Will O’ The Wind.
Vita e Bella took the rabbit start with the elegance of a boat happy to be back in the fray. The course, set with early ambition, traced a line from the rabbit start to Z, C, 8, 6, A, D, and home.
On the first run, Vita e Bella held her lead like a squirrel guarding a prized acorn. Sweet Grapes and Surprise! chased in tight formation, with Chablis IV and Will O’ The Wind following close behind. Paradigm lurked with quiet intent. Lorelei, steadfast as autumn tidewater, rounded out the fleet.
As Z approached, boats fanned out in search of wind. Vita e Bella, Surprise!, and Paradigm headed south, hunting for a better line. Sweet Grapes held course and briefly struck gold, slipping into the lead before her 130 jib snagged the top spreader, a small mischief of rigging that cost her dearly. Paradigm rounded Z first, followed by Vita e Bella, Surprise!, and then Sweet Grapes, now in fourth.
On the run to C, two or three porpoises surfaced — seasonal visitors who seem to appear just when spirits are already high. Chablis IV and Vita e Bella raised their spinnakers, bright as fallen leaves caught on the wind. Surprise! and Vita e Bella matched each other stride for stride, while Paradigm pressed farther south, biding her advantage. In the end, Paradigm reached C first, with Vita e Bella and Surprise! close behind.
The breeze, still bashful, crept up to six knots on the long leg to 8. With daylight already slipping away faster at this time of year, the race committee shortened the course: From 8, the fleet would round Z once more and then head home to the marina.
Sweet Grapes found her rhythm on the run to 8 and slipped past Vita e Bella. Paradigm rounded 8 first, Surprise! second, and Sweet Grapes third. Soon after, Sweet Grapes reeled in Surprise! again on the way to Z.
Paradigm, sails set and mood steady, held her lead toward the finish. The fleet chose a graceful wing-on-wing run for the last leg, gliding home like a line of migrating geese. Surprise! nipped at Sweet Grapes’ stern, Vita e Bella followed, and Will O’ The Wind kept a determined pace.
But, as Thanksgiving itself often reminds us, things look different once everything is properly measured. After the corrected times were tallied, the podium shifted. Surprise! finished first, followed by Will O’ The Wind in second and Chablis IV in third. A fine autumn afternoon, a lively fleet, and just enough breeze to keep us grateful.
A Good Dinghy — Don’t Cast Off Without One
On December 31, 1999, Dena Hankins and James Lane set sail from Seattle, and they’ve been underway in one form or another ever since, but mostly under sail. Dena (novelist and short-story author) is an amazing navigator. James (three novels in) has been a sailor for longer than you … maybe even your kin … anyway, yeah. In 2006, they sailed from S.F. Bay to the Big Island of Hawaii. James was Latitude 38’s nude centerfold that December, a story he regales strangers with to this very day. Today they are sailing their 30-ft electric sailboat around the world with their not-quite-useless cat, Beluga Greyfinger.
The dinghy is not an afterthought! From our current vantage, safe at anchor aboard our Baba 30 electric sailboat SV SN-E Cetacea in Bermuda, it’s a pleasure to recount the dinghy choices (yes, choices!) we’ve experienced … enjoyed … survived.
Our first boat was a Port Ludlow-ported William Garden Sea Wolf ketch that came with a bronze-riveted beauty of a wooden clinker rowing dinghy. We learned how to get around in the world on those two boats (beginning in Eagle Harbor and moving through the San Juans, then south to San Francisco) and, of the two, the dinghy was both safer and so much more fun. We called her Sojourner Earth, and she performed as the perfect commuter vessel across Drayton Harbor (Blaine, Birch Bay, and Semiahmoo, WA) for winter 2000–2001. Sport fishers and terrifyingly adorable 600-pound harbor seals made an adventure of every single morning crossing that bay in a winter of many zeros.
When we downsized our primary vessel from a 48-ft wooden ketch to a fiberglass Gulf 32 pilot house sloop in the San Francisco Bay Area (Emeryville, Richmond, Alameda, Oakland and San Francisco were all homes for us and our new boat in the early 2000s), we got a great deal on an 8-ft Fatty Knees, and that’s when we fell in love with the rowing/sailing dinghy once again. Sojourner Earth had been a joy to row, but she was destroyed in a storm off Cape Mendocino on the way down from Eureka, so when we got another dinghy, we put that Fatty Knees to the test, sailing and rowing in almost every condition and towing it everywhere we went.
After some months exploring India, we decided to check out the East Coast of the US. Our next boat, wintering in Norfolk, VA (before we rescued her upon our return to the US from Goa), came with a Dyer Midget, the absolute most sailing dinghy you can fit on the bow of a Rhodes Chesapeake 32. We named that dink Tinker because we considered ourselves (and totally are) itinerant working people of our world. She was like a kitty to us. She followed us everywhere. Before we started our decade of yo-yo-ing the Eastern Seaboard, we gave Tinker a loving rebuild that strengthened her up but also made her a whole lot heavier. We’d already discovered that two 200-pound adults were too many for her sail plan, but that poor boat spent amazing amounts of time being rowed by us: laundry, groceries, water … a few scant, brave inches of freeboard keeping the water out and the people/stuff in.
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