‘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!