‘Latitude 38’ Awards the 2025 Wosser Trophies
Latitude 38 recently awarded the 2025 Wosser trophies to three racers or racing teams from across the San Francisco Bay Area. The Wosser trophies are unique in that they do not necessarily focus on who was the most successful in winning in a season. Rather, they focus solely on participation in sailing, particularly as concerns loom about declining participation in our sport.
The trophies were the brainchild of longtime and legendary Bay Area sailor Ron Young and entrusted to Latitude 38 to award, with the first trophies awarded in 2021. You can read more about their backstory here.
The Jake Wosser Trophy: Haydon Zieger, California Yacht Club
The Jake Wosser Trophy is the only one of the three trophies for which a sailor’s performance in any given regatta is taken into account. It is awarded annually to the winner of the single largest one-design regatta on San Francisco Bay in any given year.
After combing through regatta results from this past calendar year, we determined the 2025 winner of the Jake Wosser Trophy to be Haydon Zieger, a junior Opti sailor at California Yacht Club.
The regatta that he won was the 2025 Opti Pacific Coast Championship, which was hosted by the San Francisco Yacht Club (SFYC) on September 27 and 28. Haydon won the Opti championship fleet, which had 51 boats on the line, with a net total of 28 points from eight races. See the full results here.
“San Francisco Bay is known to be windy, but for this year’s Pacific Coast Championship, it was especially windy,” young Haydon tells Latitude. “Wind on the racecourse at Berkeley Circle registered at 30-plus knots on the first day of the regatta.… Conditions were very shifty and puffy, so it was challenging. On the second day, the winds died down a bit with a strong current, so it was a very different day of racing. At the end of the day, I was very surprised to hear from my coach on the water that I had won the regatta. I feel incredibly honored to receive this award and am very grateful for all of the support that I get from my coaches and team at the California Yacht Club.”
The Ruth Wosser Trophy: Chris Kramer, Richmond Yacht Club
The Ruth Wosser Trophy rewards consistent participation. We award it to the sailor determined to have raced the most regatta days in a calendar year. This was perhaps the hardest trophy winner to determine. We did so using Google forms, and with the invaluable help of Ray Irvine and his work using the Jibeset database. Thank you, Ray; we couldn’t have done it without you.
This year’s Ruth Wosser Trophy was also hard to award because of how close it was. Just one day of racing separated the eventual winner from the runner-up. Chris Kramer of Richmond Yacht Club is our 2025 Ruth Wosser Trophy winner, logging 58 days of racing aboard his Alerion 28, SWEET DE. Just behind Kramer was Samantha Chiu and her Open 5.70 Altair (SeqYC) with 57 days raced. If there could be a photo finish for this trophy, that would be it.
“I moved from the East Coast to the Bay Area back in 2016 and looked forward to racing in a new region with year-round racing,” Kramer tells us. “I spent most of 2017 signing up for just about all the racing I could fit in with my boat at the time, so that I could get a feel for all the different races and race venues throughout the season. At the end of 2019, I bought an Alerion 28, SWEET DE, so that my wife, Denise, and I could race on our own without the complications of a big crew. The boat is great because it can be raced doublehanded or singlehanded with ease. Living in Point Richmond and keeping SWEET DE at RYC, there’s really no excuse for not sailing/racing all the time. Also, being semi-retired this year removed any possible excuse for not racing.”
Susie Wosser Trophy: Rick and Petra Gilmore, Sequoia Yacht Club
The Susie Wosser Trophy recognizes the incredibly important responsibility of taking new people sailing. One of the most effective ways to get newcomers into our sport (because not everyone is born into a sailing family) is to just take them out sailing. The Susie Wosser Trophy is awarded to the boat owner(s) taking the greatest number of people out racing in any given year.
This year’s Susie Wosser Trophy winners are Rick and Petra Gilmore of Sequoia Yacht Club, who took a whopping 65 total people out on their Catalina 42 Revelry.
“Rick and I feel so honored and fortunate to win this year’s Susie Wosser Trophy for bringing the most people out racing,” Petra says. “We have taken people racing who have never been on a boat, and others that are world-class sailors. Everyone gets a job trimming jib or main. We’ve got a ‘no rail meat policy;’ everyone participates.”
“Our favorite thing to do is to introduce people to sailboat racing,” Rick adds. “Sequoia’s openness to bringing new sailors into the community and the club’s proximity to the Silicon Valley means there is always a great group of people from all walks of life and from all over the world that show up at the Wednesday night Sunset races, interested in experiencing sailing and racing.”
“After the race we take our crew up to the Sequoia Yacht Club for a post-race burger and refreshment,” Petra tells us. “It’s a great time to gather around the grill and introduce the new crew to other skippers and crew, thereby starting to weave them into the racing community. The evening culminates with the race awards. The race captain awards beer or wine glasses to boats that come in first, boats that sailed with the most new sailors (pickups), and to sailors who came the farthest to race.”
Building a Tradition
At Latitude, our goal is always to increase participation in sailing, and the Wosser trophies are an important recognition of people who have triumphed in the sport even if they haven’t necessarily won a regatta. The best thing anyone can do for our sport is to just go out racing, and take new people out racing to introduce them to our amazing sport. We were thrilled with the number of submissions we received for the Wosser trophies this year, but we want to build on that next year and really turn this into a tradition. With that said, competition for the 2026 Wosser trophies is officially open!
Two Sailboats vs One Container Ship and Two Tugs
We’ve shared many reports about illegal anchor-outs, abandoned vessels, and sunken or grounded vessels, many of which pose a hazard to sailboats and other marine traffic. This week we received a video that shows another very real peril on the Bay when two sailboats were on a collision course with a container ship. The tussle was caught on video by Jessica McNally from aboard the Oakland/Alameda-S.F. ferry as it headed to the city around 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, December 4.
It’s not clear if both boats had someone aboard. We can’t see anyone aboard the smaller boat, though they may be there. Perhaps the larger boat was trying to push the other out of the way of the container ship? We’ve seen photos and reports of rafted anchor-outs in Oakland (we’ll share those in another story); perhaps these two boats were rafted together, making someone’s home?
Jessica wrote to add a little more about what she’d witnessed.
“The container ship was preparing to turn in the basin. I looked away for a few minutes and when I turned back to see the progress of the container ship, that’s when I saw that two boats had moved in front of the ship. Initially, I thought the larger sailboat had come over to try and help move the smaller boat out of the way. But after reviewing the video, I, too, didn’t see anyone on the smaller sailboat.”
Jessica says that once the sailboats were out from in front of the container ship, they “continued to slowly drift around, seemingly tied together.”
“I had taken a still shot of the container ship earlier and it looked like the two boats were closer to the Alameda side. I have no idea how they ended up in front of the ship, though. If you zoom in on the attached photo you can see them on the far left. Wish I could provide more info. But boy, was that a startling thing to see!”
Thanks, Jessica! We appreciate the video and the follow-up. Did anyone else witness this, or some other crazy near-miss on the Bay recently?
Quality Yachts With Premium Service From Swiftsure Yachts
Swiftsure Yachts offers exceptional service, quality brokerage boats and new yachts for world cruising. Visit our website swiftsureyachts.com.
Midwinter Sailing in Sausalito: A Bit Chili
Sausalito Yacht Club’s (SYC) Chili Midwinter #2 on Sunday, December 7, proved to be chilly. Bundled up for that chill, Nancy’s crew gathered at Clipper Yacht Harbor to prep the boat and stow the extra boat snacks we’d brought along. Every wind forecaster — SailFlow, Windy, PredictWind and good old NOAA — told us over and over to expect anything from zero to low-single-digit northerly wind. The current prediction was a four-plus-knot flood later in the race period, a good formula for anchoring and waiting, so we made sure the ground tackle was ready to go.
Anchored with the knotmeter reading three knots is not all that unusual for winter racing in Richardson Bay. Reality kicked in as we motored out of the marina with the true-wind needle pegged at 12 knots. Now we dove below to secure things -— including the anchor and chain — and put an extra wrap on the primary winches. We found less wind where SYC’s Mercury was anchored at one end of the start/finish line, but more than all those expensive wind forecast services promised. Wind speeds varied from high single digit to low double digits for the race.
The race committee pulled more or less windward-leeward courses from their quiver using YRA N (Sausalito Entrance Marker #2) and YRA 12 (Little Harding Rock buoy) as windward and leeward marks, with the start/finish line in the middle. As is often the case, the port side of the course was favored on the first leg from the start line to the windward mark, YRA N. The run to YRA 12 also favored the west side, where boats found more wind pressure.
For the combined Spinnaker divisions a detour around the restricted start/finish line on the second beat to YRA N resulted in most boats opting for the pin end and another port-side beat up to a second rounding at YRA N. Boats opting for the committee boat end found less wind.
Non-spinnaker boats finished after rounding Little Harding, so their choice was the middle of the line for the finish of a three-and-a-half-mile race. After rounding YRA N a second time, spinnaker boats enjoyed a quick, current-aided run back to a downwind finish for a 5.6-mile race.
The return to the berth saw wind speeds drop to near zero as we eased Nancy into her berth. After securing the boat we packed up the unopened extra boat snacks, and hit the SYC Clubhouse for complimentary post-race chili and awards. Nancy’s crew agreed with others that the afternoon had turned into a near-perfect midwinter race, and that any trust in wind forecasters was misplaced.
Race results can be found at sausalitoyachtclub.org.
From Los Gatos to the Voiles de Saint Tropez in France
We recently ran a couple of stories about Bay Area classics that have found a new home in Europe. This inspired former Los Gatos resident Eduardo Nivey, who used to sail the Bay and also in Santa Cruz before moving to Europe. Eduardo still keeps an eye on California sailing through Latitude 38 and was prompted to send a short note and some pictures from the September Voiles de St. Tropez. It’s a reminder of how many West Coast sailors “go where the wind blows,” taking them to all corners of the planet to sail. Eduardo Nivey was sailing aboard the classic boat Sonny and managed to snap some shots of passing boats.
While Eduardo was shooting photos from Sonny, he was also racing at the Voiles de St. Tropez in France, where they took first in class. He also snapped a photo of St. Francis YC member Jim Schwarz’s Maxi 72 Vesper, which took second in class in the Voiles. Howard Clayman also sent us a couple of shots of former Bay Area classic Santana, still owned by Wendy Schmidt, who took fifth in her 18-boat Voiles de St. Tropez division.
The Vesper crew brought a little California with them, as the crew gear looked as if they were going to be setting sail in the Transpac rather than the Voiles de St. Tropez. Also racing in the Voiles was Dan Gribble of Boatswain’s Locker in Costa Mesa aboard his Tripp 65 Prevail.
One of the great reasons to have readers stay in touch is the opportunity to connect with other California sailors and sailboats sailing around the world. The video above shows why sailors travel all the way from California to be part of the Voiles de St. Tropez. This also connected us with some video of Schwartz’s Vesper sailing in the Voiles de St. Barth.
Thanks to Randall von Wedel’s stories on Grisette and Pursuit, which then inspired Howard Clayman to send us pics of Santana in Antibes, we’ve now heard from Eduardo Nivey with an update on his sailing life in Europe: the story that keeps on giving!
Join San Francisco Marina’s Holiday Event
