West Coast Teams Dominate at Long Beach YC C420 Nationals
From July 8 through 10, 73 teams of teenage sailors from all around the country duked it out on the Southern California and Long Beach Yacht Club (LBYC) waters for the 2026 Club 420 (C420) National Championship.
Each team sailed nine races and was afforded one drop. In the end it was a Southern California duo of Gage Christopher and Madison Mansour racing under the burgee of Alamitos Bay Yacht Club (ABYC), and for the 73 Sailing racing team.
Christopher and Mansour were dominant, recording a net total of 14 points from nine races. They finished outside the top three only once, a fourth-place finish in race seven that would be their drop. They were so dominant, in fact, that their final score was less than half that of second-place Connor Karr and Ella Valentina Agnese (Columbia River YC and One United).
Christopher and Mansour won four races, including three straight between races two and four (their final bullet was in race eight). Second-place Karr and Agnese won the first race of the event and recorded four other top-three finishes. Their drop, an 18th-place finish in race four, forced them to keep two sixths and an eighth.
The podium was rounded out by the duo of Wyatt Kelly and Fiona Barbeito, racing for San Diego Yacht Club (SDYC), ABYC, and 73 Sailing. They recorded four top-three finishes, including two bullets, but a 24th in the final race of the event forced them to keep a 16th.
While 73 boats participated in the regatta, there were never actually 73 boats on the start line at once. As has long been a practice of the C420 class at such major regattas, the fleet was split in half at random for the first two days of the event, with scores added up together. For the final day of racing, the fleet was split into gold and silver fleets, with the top 37 boats qualifying for gold fleet and the rest racing out the final day in silver.
The regatta as a whole was a success for West Coast teams, with the top 10 dominated by teams from Southern California, Northern California, and the Pacific Northwest.
You can find the full results from the 2026 C420 National Championship here.