Tahoe Yacht Club’s Monday Night Dinghy Spring Series Is in the Books

Tahoe Yacht Club’s Monday Night Dinghy spring series is in the books! Since 1982, Tahoe Yacht Club has hosted Monday night dinghy racing for the International Laser Class Association (ILCA), out of the Lake Forest Boat Ramp near Tahoe City. About 25 sailors turn out each week for two seven-week series — spring and summer — with racing divided into two fleets: Division One for seasoned racers and Division Two for newer dinghy sailors.

The spring series has wrapped up, and over seven weeks, the fleet experienced just about everything Lake Tahoe could throw at them — cold evenings, hail, wildly shifty winds, and even one race abandoned for a complete lack of breeze. That’s spring sailing on Lake Tahoe.

Forty-three years after the first Monday night start, the fleet is still attracting new sailors, challenging experienced ones, and proving that a simple 14-ft dinghy is one of the best ways to sharpen sailing skills and have a whole lot of fun doing it.

One of this year’s spring series winners, keelboat skipper and longtime ILCA racer Rick Raduziner, continues to set the pace. Meanwhile, two familiar TYC keelboat sailors have recently discovered the fun (and humility) of one-person racing. Martin Gibson, a national Melges 24 competitor and current subject of TYC’s Block & Tackle “Sailor Spotlight,” and Randy Thomas, chair of TYC’s historic Trans Tahoe Regatta and a regular crew member aboard Rick Raduziner’s Santa Cruz 27 Lickety Split, are among those embracing the challenge. Good for them, proving that it’s never too late to embrace a singlehanded sailing skill.

You can find the full results of the series here.