Hope you had a great winter and are gearing up for sailing our cool little boats.
Here’s a composite schedule of C-15 regattas for 2026:
Please let me know if anything is wrong or missing. As always any regatta reports or pictures are most welcome.
Note the 2026 North Americans will be held at Huntington Lake in conjunction with the second weekend of the High Sierra Regatta, July 17-19. After all these years it remains an amazing place to go sailing and the spiritual home of our class. Please mark your calendars!
A couple announcements: In two weeks on May 1, 2025 the Thu night Sunstroke Series begins! – hosted by SCCYC. As before there will be great racing on the water and tacos afterward. Hope to see you all “out there”. Last year we had 10 C-15s register over the course of the summer, hope to get that many out again; we were consistently the largest fleet each Thursday…
And if you want even more weeknight sailing, on Tue nights the Vic Smith series hosted by the MDR Venture/MacGregor Fleet has begun. This is a PHRF handicap series. They give C-15s a rating of 220, so we can race against the little keelboats in PHRF C. The start/finish is off Chase Burton Park and we either race to the breakwater or around it. After-race socializing is hosted by SMWYC.
Welcome to C-15 sailing in 2025! I hope you’ve had a great winter and are gearing up for sailing in our great little boats.
Here is a composite schedule of C-15 regattas for 2025:
Please let me know if there’s any you would add. Want to keep this up to date. As well, please share keep me posted with any pictures or notes about regattas which have taken place. I’m happy to disseminate.
I would highlight especially the 2025 NAs which will be hosted by the awesome Half Moon Bay YC on August 1-3. Put that on your calendar! And also, as a great warm up, the 2025 High Sierra regatta is July 19-20. We are on “weekend 2” as for many years now.
Lucy Gillies is your 2025 C-15 Class President and the regatta chair for the HMBYC NAs. Please email her with any questions you might have, and we’ll try to post updates via email and on our website. Also Vincent Paternoster is our Treasurer and Measurer.
Finally want to highlight that this website hosts our class bylaws, people often ask me about this. They were slightly updated as a result of discussion at the 2024 NAs in Santa Barbara.
Here’s a report on the recently concluded C-15 North Americans in Santa Barbara. It was a great event; a massive Thank You (!) to the Santa Barbara Yacht Club, who were amazing hosts, and especially to Brad Schaupeter, Sailing Director (and regatta PRO), Kayla Householder, Club Event Coordinator, Jeff Berkus, Vice Commodore, and the many members who volunteered for race committee and to help run the events.
Santa Barbara harbor as seen from YC deck
Thirteen boats participated, from Southern (Marina Del Rey, Santa Barbara, Seal Beach, Westlake Village) and Northern California (Half Moon Bay, Sacramento), and St Petersburg, Florida. We also had a competitor from Sidney, Australia. The Corp Series was held on Fri 8/9 (five races), and the Championship Series took place on Sat 8/10 – Sun 8/11 (nine races with one throwout).
C-15s relaxing at the guest dock after a hard day in the ocean
I can’t do all the racing justice in this report, but I will say we were treated to a beautiful variety of conditions, with strong winds in the high teens on Friday, light winds 5-8 knots on Saturday, and medium winds 10-12 knots on Sunday. The Race Committee did a perfect job with square lines and weather marks, enabling many passing lanes both upwind and down and lots of great competition. With the sun on the ocean and with the city of Santa Barbara climbing the hills behind the harbor, it was a beautiful scene.
Santa Barbara as seen from the race course offshore
The stronger winds on Friday for the Corp Series created some interesting challenges for seeding competitors into A and B, as several boats turtled and others broke down. After some discussion it was decided to sail everyone together in the Championship Series, award the A trophies to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places, and award the B trophies to 7th, 8th, and 9th places. It wasn’t a perfect solution but it seemed agreeable and resulted in great racing with everyone together on the line and out on the course.
Congratulations to longtime C-15 sailor and champion Allison Jolly (1988 Olympic Gold Medalist!) who voyaged all the way out from Florida (St Petersburg YC) to sail with us, and who won the qualification series with her crew Andrew Sumpton.
PRO Brad Schaupeter conducts the competitor’s briefing
On Saturday the winds were lighter, the sun was out, and we were able to get in five excellent races as planned. Saturday night we had an excellent dinner at the YC followed by the C-15 Association’s Annual Class Meeting. The Minutes from this meeting are shown below. The most important business was choosing the next venue for the North Americans and Half Moon Bay are going to be our 2025 Hosts, with Lucy Gillies volunteering to serve as Class President. (Choosing someone who runs a distillery is always a good idea.)
On Sunday the winds were Goldilocks, not too heavy, not too light, and we had four more excellent races to conclude the Championship. The Overall Results may be found here:
Congratulations to Dave Rumbaugh and his crew Steve Fishman from Lake Washington Sailing Club in Sacramento for five-peating as Class Champion. The Fleet gave them a good fight but they prevailed in the end. Silver went to Allison and Andrew, and Bronze to class newcomers Ryan Janov and Willie McBride of California YC in Marina Del Rey (who showed amazing speed in the heavy air Friday afternoon winning three races in a row).
My crew Carly Morgan and I finished fourth, from Westlake Village but sailing for Santa Barbara YC, and Vince Paternoster and Steve Miller finished fifth, for SCCYC in MDR.
The Cabrillo Results (B Fleet):
Gold: Mark Brazil and Frederique Haustete of SCCYC in Marina Del Rey
Silver: Lucy Gillies and Simon Bird of Half Moon Bay YC
Bronze: Stanly Martin and Dana Longo of Half Moon Bay YC
Most interestingly and unexpectedly, Mark and Frederique actually tied on points for sixth overall with Wil Paul and Chris Peasley of Seal Beach YC; Will and Chris won the tiebreak to take 6th, and so Mark and Frederique finished 7th and thereby won the Cabrillo Trophy.
Others in the competition included Marc Arseneault and Claire Sheehan, finishing 10th for HMBYC, Arman Rezaee with his kids Simone and Malcom as crew, finishing 11th, from HMBYC (Simone and Malcom are each future champions, I am sure; it was a joy to see them out there in the heavy stuff on Friday, having a great time without a care in the world), Carl Hage and Stevie Thompson, in 12th, from HMBYC, and perennial class stalwart Charlie Quest with his crew Ofer Amir, also from HMBYC. Charlie’s Grand Ol Gal (First in Class) had a few issues after spending a great deal of Friday afternoon upside down, but crew and vessel recovered overnight and were back on the water for the championship series.
A little 30 min video of some of the events and sailing action may be found here:
Yes, it includes the infamous “there’s a boat in my boat” footage you may have seen on Facebook or Sailing Anarchy. Yes, that happened. (Apologies that the GoPro was on my boat for the racing; maybe in future we can incorporate some drone video.)
yes, that happened
Speaking of drones the SBYC Race Committee did fly one on Fri and Sat, and we were treated to beautiful overhead videos of the racing to watch on Saturday night. I’m working to get copies of these and will post and share when I can.
drone video! how cool is that – thank you SBYC Race Committee
Cheers and see you all soon – maybe in Half Moon Bay next year!
