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Pacific Cup Finishers Roaring Into Hawaii
It’s been an interesting year for the Pacific Cup, although they all are in one way or another. A wide patch of light air across the course added a day or so to most boats’ passage times. Pacific Cup applied the Forecast Time Correction Factor to the ORR boats, which anticipated that weather somewhat, but still was “something new” for the racers to learn.
The classic sled Ragtime, Tina Roberts’ Spencer 65, has added a Pac Cup division win to her international cabinet of trophies, and right now stands to take the overall Pacific Cup (ORR) prize as well. Her corrected time is 16 hours ahead of Roy Disney’s Andrews 68 Pyewacket and four more in front of Zeus, Michael Firmin’s iridescent green racer with foils sticking out the sides of its hull.
In the rest of the division, only a few hours separated Chip Merlin’s Bill Lee 70 Merlin, Vitesse, and the newly-launched GEM, a Wylie 80 built for David Raney in the Pacific Northwest. We expect all these boats back for a rematch and expect great things of GEM as she gets her program dialed in. Flying the flag of Hong Kong, the 80-ft Apsaras is due to finish sometime today.
Recidivist was looking good as she arrived third in the Gosling’s Rum division.The 2026 edition of the race features three PHRF divisions and five ORR divisions, including one of each doublehanded. The overall Pacific Cup trophy will be awarded twice, once for each rating system. According to an unnamed source, “We just couldn’t find a system to harmonize them that was both fair and satisfying.” So, two winners.
Right now, it looks as if the PHRF Overall Pac Cup winner will be VIVA, Don Jesberg’s Cal 40, also topping the PHRF 2 division. Only boats with “certified” (i.e., measured) PHRF ratings are eligible for the top prize. VIVA is followed by True Love, then fellow Cal 40s Duende and Green Buffalo, which is skippered by Pac Cup addict and RYC commodore Jim Quanci.
In the doublehanded world, a standout performance was shown by Rahan, a Beneteau First 36 heavily tuned for ocean racing and skippered by Charles “Charly” Devanneaux. With an early Tuesday start and a comparatively quick passage through the light stuff, Rahan sprinted out ahead of the pack, finishing first of all the boats with a sizable gap to the next. Charly will take home first in division and second overall ORR.
There were only three doublehanded PHRF boats, all scheduled for a Monday finish and correcting to a set-in-stone order of SURF, Akumu and Bazinga.
One benefit of a comparatively light-air race is somewhat less damage. “We got a few reports of broken vangs and the like, but apart from Shake and Bake, nothing much,” communications chair Michael Moradzadeh, reports.
The most notable reported repair: Shake and Bake, a Farr X2 sailed by Jack Peurach and Brett Perry, lost one of her twin rudders to an underwater collision, and then the second failed. The pair crawled along under drogue steering while they worked out a solution and counted up their food and water supplies. After some hours of work, they managed to get two rudders cobbled together out of supplies on hand and carried on with reduced sail to meet the next challenges.
We will probably learn of other damage once the fleet is in. There can be a tendency to conceal these issues, particularly among the professionally sailed boats, so as not to show weakness to the competition.
With 33 (at this writing) boats finished, Pac Cup is counting down to its 1000th finisher since the start of the race in 1980. Before the start of this race, 966 boats had crossed the finish line. The next boat to finish today will be the 1000th. “A thousand finishes is well over two million miles sailed. We’ll celebrate that with a prize to the 1000th finisher,” says PCYC commodore Bob Hinden.
For many racers, the attraction is not the chance at a pickle dish (or a nice Weems & Plath clock or barometer) but the voyage among the whales, dolphins, bioluminescence and nighttime stars that will take your breath away. The small stories of getting smacked by a flying fish or that amazing train of surfed waves that seemed to go on forever. And finally, at the end, the friendship and stories at Kaneohe Yacht Club punctuated by amazing parties staged by the staff and volunteers. And, always, the plan for the next race in 2028.
You can see the current race standings here.
Sausalito City Manager Arrested on Suspicion of Burglary at Sausalito Yacht Harbor
Neptune must have a beef with Sausalito right now. The popular waterfront town is in the news again, this time regarding the arrest of Sausalito city manager Elaine Christina Forbes. Forbes, 53, was arrested early on Saturday morning on charges of burglary. The alleged crime occurred at Sausalito Yacht Harbor on Humboldt Avenue at around 6:50 a.m. Saturday. Authorities responding to a call about a burglary found Forbes inside a boat that was not hers, Lt. Domenick Yazzolino of the Marin County Sheriff’s Office told the Marin Independent Journal (MIJ). Forbes told officers she was having a “bad morning” and told them to get off her boat, Yazzolino said.
The arrest came just three weeks after Forbes took office with Sausalito City Council. It was also just three days after Sausalito City Council (SCC) held a closed session to discuss Forbes, after which they issued a statement that Forbes was on administrative leave.
“The Sausalito City Council met in closed session today and approved a leave of absence for Elaine Forbes through September 8,” the statement said. “Assistant City Manager Brandon Phipps is Acting City Manager and will oversee the day-to-day responsibilities of City Manager during this period. In order to respect privacy rights and employment laws, the City will not further discuss this personnel matter.”
Neither Sausalito mayor Steven Woodside nor Phipps could be reached for comment on Sunday, the IJ reported. The Council did, however, release a statement saying they would not comment due to the ongoing investigation. They said the arrest was “a difficult development for our city staff and our community.”
Forbes has more than two decades of public-sector experience, including nine years as the San
Francisco Port Director (2016–December 2025), during which time she oversaw a complex public enterprise responsible for waterfront infrastructure, maritime operations, real estate, public access and long-term stewardship of public assets, the SCC website says.
She has worked with nonprofit land-use and economic-development organizations, including the Urban Strategies Council and the Western Center on Law and Poverty. She holds a master’s degree in urban planning from UCLA. “People from around the world save money and dream of coming to Sausalito for very good reasons. I’m incredibly honored to join this community,” Forbes said on Tuesday, May 5, at the City Council meeting during which her appointment to city manager was confirmed. We can only imagine that Forbes’ words to officers that she was having a “bad morning” were an understatement. We hope she finds the help she needs.
This is not the first time Sausalito Yacht Harbor has been the target of burglary. In 2013 the 82-ft Oyster Darling was stolen by three drunken sailors looking for a good time. Story here.
Sign Up Now for the 32nd Annual Baja Ha-Ha
Get off the fence and down to the docks for the greatest fun you’ll have all year — the 2026 Baja Ha-Ha Cruisers Rally to Mexico. The thousands of sailors who’ve done it before you can’t all be wrong. Sign up, join the fleet and get ready for a fun cruise south this November.
Tahoe Yacht Club’s Monday Night Dinghy Spring Series Is in the Books
Tahoe Yacht Club’s Monday Night Dinghy spring series is in the books! Since 1982, Tahoe Yacht Club has hosted Monday night dinghy racing for the International Laser Class Association (ILCA), out of the Lake Forest Boat Ramp near Tahoe City. About 25 sailors turn out each week for two seven-week series — spring and summer — with racing divided into two fleets: Division One for seasoned racers and Division Two for newer dinghy sailors.
The spring series has wrapped up, and over seven weeks, the fleet experienced just about everything Lake Tahoe could throw at them — cold evenings, hail, wildly shifty winds, and even one race abandoned for a complete lack of breeze. That’s spring sailing on Lake Tahoe.
Forty-three years after the first Monday night start, the fleet is still attracting new sailors, challenging experienced ones, and proving that a simple 14-ft dinghy is one of the best ways to sharpen sailing skills and have a whole lot of fun doing it.
One of this year’s spring series winners, keelboat skipper and longtime ILCA racer Rick Raduziner, continues to set the pace. Meanwhile, two familiar TYC keelboat sailors have recently discovered the fun (and humility) of one-person racing. Martin Gibson, a national Melges 24 competitor and current subject of TYC’s Block & Tackle “Sailor Spotlight,” and Randy Thomas, chair of TYC’s historic Trans Tahoe Regatta and a regular crew member aboard Rick Raduziner’s Santa Cruz 27 Lickety Split, are among those embracing the challenge. Good for them, proving that it’s never too late to embrace a singlehanded sailing skill.
You can find the full results of the series here.
A Surprise or Two Uncovered In the 2026 Baja Ha-Ha Bios
In the course of putting together a bio for this fall’s Baja Ha-Ha, I came across this line from one of the entrants: “When doing boat trips, I always give a sigh of relief when we get back to within 20 miles of shore because I know if worst came to worst I could swim ashore.”
“Oh sure,” I thought, chuckling to myself. But then I read further: “I’m an open-water swimmer, having completed the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming, which is the Catalina Channel, around Manhattan, and the English Channel. I’ve also swum around Key West [and] the Anacapa Channel, escaped Alcatraz, [and swum] the Salt River in Arizona, across Lake Tahoe, and various smaller lakes in the Sierras.” Whoa, I take my skepticism back! Way back.
Just so everyone is clear, I, Richard Spindler, founder of the Baja Ha-Ha and the Grand Poobah for all 31 years, have indeed retired and sold the company. I absolutely love the event, but I’m 78, and sadly it was time. I’m confident Chuck Skewes, the new owner and vet of many Ha-Ha’s, will do a great job along with the help of longtime Assistant Poobah Patsy Verhoeven, who has done about 20 of them. My only role is that I’m editing the bios on a contract basis.
It’s a heck of a lot of fun because there are so many interesting people who will be doing the Ha-Ha. For example, another entry’s previous longest passage was a circumnavigation aboard his humble Morgan 38! But don’t worry, you don’t have to be a circumnavigator or a world-class swimmer to join the Ha-Ha. For complete information on the Ha-Ha, which starts on November 2, and to sign up, visit www.baja-haha.com.
Check out this clip of Chuck Skewes in conversation with Ed Lecco, who did the 2022 Baja Ha-Ha aboard his Hylas 54 Voyager:
Start your Ha-Ha at our Fall Crew List Party.
ILCAs at the 2026 High Sierra Regatta — High Altitude, Low Pressure
Seven ILCA sailors, all full rigs, sailed in last weekend’s High Sierra Regatta at Huntington Lake. The fleet split between four NorCal sailors (Al Sargent, Marcel Sloane, Steve Schmidt, aka Schmidty, and myself, Chris Simenstad) and three from SoCal, including father and son Robert and Sam Suddath, first-timers at this event. Ernie Galvan was registered but fell ill (and fittingly gave his luxury lodging reservation to an Aero sailor). Other regulars were absent, partly because the North American Championships were at Cabrillo Beach the same weekend. So, it was a small but tight fleet.
This regatta is one of the best in our district. The high-altitude lake is long and narrow with a dam at its western end, and most days a moderate thermal westerly comes up midmorning. More than a dozen small-boat fleets showed up this year — Day Sailers were the largest, with 17 boats. The Fresno Yacht Club issues commemorative cocktail glasses at check-in. It’s a fun scene with great racing.
Saturday’s three races were classic Huntington — sunny skies and 8–12 knots. Enough to hike much of the time, but not so much that you could forget to look for pressure. Downwind, staying in the wind required a “swivel head” to spot the puffs rolling down the lake. All races were yo-yo courses: double windward-leeward, with the second leeward mark at number eight at the lake’s easternmost end followed by a short beat to the finish.
Al dominated Saturday. I got second and Marcel third in races two and three. In race two, Marcel and I sailed into a hole by the shore of the fire-ruined Boy Scout camp at the end of the first beat, and watched Sam and Schmidty tack out, get lifted right past us, and take second and third.
Sunday brought monsoonal moisture. The race committee worried a Mono breeze would develop, bringing big easterly gusts and thunderstorm danger. Despite cloud cover, race four offered enough westerly to keep us moving: Al won, I was second and Marcel third.
Race five was challenging, and in the end very frustrating. The westerly puffs narrowed and then dissipated. Strategy became a guessing game, and Al’s supremacy was finally dislodged. Marcel rounded the first windward mark ahead, was passed by Schmidty and me downwind, and Schmidty won the second beat.
On the final run, the breeze died entirely, and we floated to mark eight in glassy conditions among a few Aeros and doublehanded dinghies. Marcel showed extreme focus and rounded first. Al, now last, hit the mark and did his circles. After 20 more minutes of floating, with the RC’s abandonment discussion squawking on VHF radios, Schmidty called it quits and fell off his boat (twice) trying to paddle in. Marcel got within striking distance of the finish, and then the RC made its call: racing abandoned for all fleets.
The awards ceremony was held in light rain. Al won the regatta, I took second, Marcel third, and Sam fourth.
Overall, a great regatta. Each evening, people gathered to exchange food and laughs, Marcel’s family and friends filling out the social scene and keeping the conversation from being all sailing. On Saturday night, his friends Kim and Ted shared a half-gallon of vanilla ice cream and a pan of brownies, setting a new standard for a camping regatta. One note to our district secretary: When invited to dinner at other sailors’ campsites, show up with two things minimum, a cup and a chair.
Schmidty remarked how much fun it was to sail with new people like the Suddaths. Maybe next year we can do some outreach to District 25 and make this a competition between our two fleets. If the Day Sailers can get 17 boats, why can’t we?
You will be able to read more about the 2026 High Sierra Regatta in the Racing Sheet, in the August issue of Latitude 38.
Westwind Yacht Management — Washing, Waxing and Varnishing
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