Calling for More Wosser Trophy Submissions
This article highlighting the 2026 Wosser trophies originally ran with the October 23 edition of ‘Lectronic Latitude. Latitude 38 is still looking for submissions to be considered for the trophies, in particular the Susie and Ruth Wosser trophies. If you or a friend think you might qualify, please fill out this Google form.
As 2026 draws closer to its conclusion, Latitude 38 is looking to continue the annual tradition of the Wosser trophies. Established in honor of avid Bay Area sailors Jake, Ruth and Susie Wosser, the trophies aim to promote participation in sailboat racing above all else. Since sailing is such a wide-ranging sport, we need your help to identify the winners of the 2026 Wosser trophies.
The Jake Wosser Trophy recognizes the sailor or team that won the largest one-design regatta on San Francisco Bay in 2026. The winner could come from a fleet of 50-plus-ft keelboats, or tiny Optis.
Last year’s winner was Hayden Zieger, an Opti sailor from California Yacht Club who won the 2025 Opti Pacific Coast Championship at San Francisco Yacht Club, an event with 51 boats registered in the Opti Champs fleet. We’re looking to see who can claim the 2026 prize! Nominate someone for the Jake Wosser Trophy here.
The Ruth Wosser Trophy focuses on volume. It is awarded to the skipper or boat owner who raced the most individual YRA-sanctioned or Coast Guard-approved race days on San Francisco Bay in 2026. Last year’s competition was as close as it could get. Chris Kramer won the trophy with 58 days of racing on board his Alerion 28 Sweet De (RYC), narrowly ahead of Samantha Chiu’s Open 5.70 Altair (SeqYC) with 57 days. Do you or a friend think you may be in contention for the Ruth Wosser Trophy? Nominate someone here!
The Susie Wosser Trophy is all about bringing as many people as possible into racing. It is awarded to the boat owner who takes the greatest number of crew members racing in the calendar year. Last year’s winners were Rick and Petra Gilmore of Sequoia Yacht Club, who took an amazing total of 65 different people racing throughout the course of 2025 on board their Catalina 42, Revelry. Do you think you or a friend might qualify for the Susie Wosser Trophy? Nominate someone here!
A Few Ha-Ha Happy Snaps from Mexico
The 2026 Baja Ha-Ha fleet is set to arrive in Cabo San Lucas today for tonight’s “Can’t Believe We Cheated Death Again” dance and party at Squid Roe. By all accounts, this has been a stellar year for the fleet sailing to and in Mexico.
We’ve received stacks of photos from this year’s fleet and are putting them together for a report in Latitude 38’s December issue. In the meantime, we’ve shared a few below — just to give you a taste of the fun happening south of the border.
We’ll bring you more photos and stories from Baja Ha-Ha XXXII in the December issue of Latitude 38.
Premier Vessel Care at Safe Harbor
Heads Up on San Francisco SailGP Early Ticket Launch
SailGP is returning to San Francisco for the weekend of April 3–4, 2027. The rockets on the Bay will be racing for the 2027 season, which starts in January in Hong Kong. The 2026 season is scheduled to finish with two final events in the Persian Gulf — Dubai on November 21–22, and Abu Dhabi on November 28–29. Currently, Tom Slingsby and the Flying Roos are again in first place, and the US team is now in fourth.
The San Francisco Sail Grand Prix returns, bringing the world’s fastest sailing championship to the US for another weekend of high-speed racing and entertainment. Team USA will compete against 13 other teams from around the world.
SailGP is offering presale access to tickets Monday through Wednesday, November 16–18. After that, the tickets are up for general sale on the 19th. You can sign up for “presale” tickets here.
Max Ebb — “Under a Ladder”
“Nothing to it,” the outgoing commodore assured me. “Everyone moves up a rung on the ladder, and all the committee has to do is find some enthusiastic new member to start out on the bottom rung.”
It seemed like an easy enough assignment, so I agreed to serve on my yacht club’s nominating committee.
“The bottom rung,” the commodore explained, “is the third rear commodore position, in charge of planning club parties and other scheduled social gatherings. They get the contact list from the previous third rear. It’s an easy job for someone new to the Board.”
Well, in theory it was an easy job, but in practice it was a little more complicated. My first thought was new member Leda Horticulture, probably the club’s most enthusiastic and energetic young member. She’s a party animal, but she made it clear she would not attend Board meetings. “Not enough weekday evenings,” she claimed.
To complicate things even more, there were people near the top of the ladder who wanted to get off. Hugo Fast was in charge of the race committee, with assistance from Peg DeMeter. He would move up to vice commodore, in charge of lining up speakers for our dinner meetings. But Hugo wanted out, and Peg wanted to stay on the race committee in her assistant role. Bjorn Toulouse wanted the VC job, probably so he could schedule himself to speak on his favorite topics. But his lecture style was terrible. He was known to read verbatim from his favorite book, Celestial Navigation Made Practically Incomprehensible by Miles B. Hind, for his chalk talks to the advanced junior sailors.
The club membership records are in the library, so my next move was to prepare for what I expected to be a difficult nominating committee meeting. I decided to spend some time looking at the recent membership applications we had on file. Every application lists tasks the prospective member would like to help with, and the special skills they might have, but the data is not compiled in an easily searchable format. Fortunately, I’m old enough to be OK rifling through unsorted hard-copy documents while deciphering handwriting.
San Francisco on the Bay: “The List”
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