An Incredibly Close C420 Pacific Coast Championship
The Club 420 is perhaps the most popular doublehanded dinghy for junior sailors, with many generations of the country’s best junior sailors competing in the class. On August 29 and 30, the San Francisco Yacht Club (SFYC) hosted the class’s 2026 Pacific Coast Championship.
Of the 61 teams registered from up and down the West Coast, 58 competed in at least one race in breezy conditions on the Berkeley Circle. The regatta was eventually won by a duo from San Diego Yacht Club (SDYC): skipper Sean Kaseburg and his crew Kylie Peterson.
The SoCal duo recorded a net total of just 12 points. (Each boat was allowed one drop from six races.) After finishing 18th in the first race of the event — a score that would become their drop — the duo never finished worse than fourth in races two through six.
After a scoreline of three-two-three-four in races two through five, Kaseburg and Peterson punctuated the Pacific Coast Championship with a bullet in the final race of the event.
It was incredibly tight racing at the top. The SDYC duo needed that bullet, as they were just one point ahead of the second-place duo of Carter Newhauser and Luca Mejia-Young from Peninsula Youth Sailing Foundation (PYSF). Newhauser and Mejia-Young would have won on total points. They won three of the first four races, and never finished worse than seventh. In the end, the difference was keeping a sixth-place finish, while Kaseburg and Peterson kept nothing worse than a fourth.
The podium was rounded out by Otto Wehner and Benjamin Benahmed, who were racing under three burgees: Alamitos Bay Yacht Club, Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club and Long Beach Yacht Club. Wehner and Benahmed were just as close to winning, as they finished with a net total of 14 points, meaning that just two points separated first from third. The SoCal duo had won races three and five, but were undone by a 36th-place finish (their drop) in the final race that forced them to keep a fifth.
When the scores are so tight, there is no margin for error. The future of sailing on the West Coast appears to be bright.
Find the full scores from the 2026 C420 Pacific Coast Championship here.