San Diego Yacht Club Hosts 111th Lipton Cup
The 2026 edition of San Diego Yacht Club’s (SDYC) Lipton Cup was sailed over Halloween weekend between October 30 and November 1, pitting 12 of the most prestigious yacht clubs from across the United States and Canada against one another.
This year’s contest marked the 111th time the trophy has been up for contest, and the regatta was sailed in J/105s. After 12 races, only three points separated the top three clubs, with the team from the New York Yacht Club (NYYC) coming out victorious.
Helmed by Lance Fraser, NYYC finished with a tally of 50 points from the 12 races (the regatta did not include drops). Outside of a last-place finish in race nine, the team never finished in the bottom half of a race, and they recorded a bullet in race seven.
Going into the final two races of the regatta, it was a three-team race for the trophy. After 10 races, the home SDYC team led with 38 points, with NYYC in second with 45 and Newport Harbor Yacht Club (NHYC) in third with 46.
The SDYC opened the door for the other two competitors in the penultimate race of the regatta, finishing seventh while NYYC finished third and NHYC finished second. Going into the final race, SDYC still held a slim lead with 45 points, while NYYC and NHYC were tied at 48. The East Coast team managed a second-place finish, while Newport Harbor finished fourth. An eighth-place finish for SDYC allowed NYYC to claim the cup, marking the first time since 2012 a team other than SDYC or NHYC has won the regatta.
“Four of us did this event last year, all in different positions, so we kind of knew what to expect with the boat changes and the general conditions,” Fraser said of the regatta win, per the SDYC press release. “We’re also fortunate to have an amazing team. We took all the institutional knowledge that we had from New York doing this event so many times plus the four of us doing the event last year and really just fought as hard as we could to kind of take those learnings, apply them, and sail as best as we could. It’s all about avoiding big scores and staying consistent. And we did that for the vast majority of the regatta. We had a great time.”