‘Natural Nine’ Wins SDYC’s 2026 Islands Race
On February 6 and 7 Patrick and Mark Nichols, on their Rogers 46 Natural Nine, won the 16th edition of the Islands Race, jointly run by San Diego Yacht Club (SDYC) and Newport Harbor Yacht Club (NHYC). The winners finished the race in 19:23:17 of elapsed time, correcting out to 21:11:42, good for first place both in their ORR-C division and overall.
“This year’s fleet spanned boats in six classes ranging from 27 to 68 feet and represented a variety of designs and performance profiles,” the SDYC press release says of the race participants and course this year. “While traditionally routed around the Channel Islands, including Catalina and San Clemente, the 2026 course was shortened to an approximately 107-nautical-mile race rounding Catalina Island only due to anticipated light wind conditions. The adjustment was made to keep the fleet moving and ensure a timely finish — a practical call for skippers and crews balancing offshore ambitions with a Super Bowl Sunday finish window. This course was last used in the 2019 Islands Race.”
Though light winds were forecast, and generally arrived, conditions were better across the board than had been feared.
“We had a great day out there, much better than what the forecast predicted,” NHYC PRO Charlie Welsh says of the racing, per the SDYC press release. “We had five great starts, and four OCS across all starts. That’s a bummer on a long-distance race, but they fixed it and made the most of it. We appreciate all the competitors that made it out for the event.”
“The Islands course was conceived to be a warm-up for the two classic West Coast offshore races to Mexico: the Cabo Race hosted by Islands co-host NHYC and SDYC’s own Puerto Vallarta Race,” says SDYC waterfront director Jeff Johnson, again per the press release. “Leg one for Islands is a 20nm sprint WSW to Catalina’s west end. It’s usually a fetch and almost immediately crosses the L.A. Harbor Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS) that is equivalent to a major maritime highway. With a more westerly wind, the expectation is to zip across the Catalina channel and be around the west end in just a couple hours. This year, the event was dominated by a light southerly breeze. But after the start, Mother Nature offered more breeze than expected and most of the fleet was around the west end by 1730.”
The team on Natural Nine, along with many of the other racers, were using the race as a warm-up for the main event that is the Puerto Vallarta race later in the month.
“We came in looking to dial in the boat and have fun,” says Patrick Nichols of the winning boat, per the press release. “Plus, this is a preparation race for the PV Race at the end of the month. Going into this race, the forecast was really tough. We came in trying to maximize all of the options that we had — put up some new sails, work on our crew work — and it just worked out.”
“What surprised me was the wind being kind of on the nose,” Mark Nichols, Natural Nine’s co-owner, says per the press release. “There was a lot of upwind work, which we weren’t expecting, but it was really fun. Every time we came up, I was like ‘great.’”
You can find the full results for the 2026 Islands Race here.
The 2026 Puerto Vallarta Race is set to start on February 26 out of San Diego.