2025 Lipton Cup at San Diego Yacht Club - Overall

After an exciting weekend of tight racing in quintessential San Diego weather, the 110th Challenge for the Sir Thomas Lipton Cup concluded on Sunday, October 26.

The prestigious, invitational-only regatta brought together 12 highly competitive yacht club teams from across the United States and Mexico including Club de Yates de Acapulco, Alamitos Bay Yacht Club, American Yacht Club, Balboa Yacht Club, Bayview Yacht Club, California Yacht Club, Coronado Yacht Club, Long Beach Yacht Club, New York Yacht Club, Newport Harbor Yacht Club, San Diego Yacht Club, and San Francisco Yacht Club. Regatta Chair, Dave Vieregg, stated "We had an incredible collection of highly skilled teams racing in the 2025 Lipton Cup. It was an honor to host them at SDYC and watch the competition. The Challenge for the Lipton Cup is Southern California racing at its finest."

2025 Lipton Cup Regatta - photo © Mark Albertazzi

The regatta kicked off on Thursday, October 23 with registration, weigh-ins and a practice race so the teams had a chance to get their bearings on the member-loaned J/105 boats they would be racing over the next three days. To keep racing as fair and even as possible, the Lipton Cup regatta is structured in a round robin format where each team sails one race on each of the twelve J/105s, switching between races from the temporary floating dock brought down to the South Bay for the event.

Waterfront Director, Jeff Johnson, discussed the reasoning behind the race format stating "While a large team of experienced sailors/volunteers work really hard to clean, strip, and tune all the borrowed boats to perform equally with a suit of club owned sails used just for this event, there are still some 'differences' between the boats, like in any one design class that is two to three decades old. There are also differences between tiller-steer and wheel-steer boats, and some mild rigging differences. Those factors are why we built and maintain a 210' temp dock and fender system that can support a boat rotation format. I think the participating teams would agree that rotating boats is a key strategic element of this event."

2025 Lipton Cup Regatta - photo © Mark Albertazzi

In addition to switching boats after every race, to keep things even more interesting, the wind forecast going into the weekend was initially predicted to be on the lighter side which could potentially delay the daily race start times and cut down on the amount of races the teams could complete. Both the race committee and the competitors were holding their breath and as luck - and San Diego weather - would have it, the South Bay delivered enough wind to allow the racers to complete 12 races over the course of three days.

According to PRO Bruce Golison "Each day, we left the dock at 0945 as usual, but I told everyone on race committee to expect postponements due to all of the forecasts. We started close to on-time each day, which was great. On Sunday, based on the conditions I thought we'd be postponing for about a half hour or longer on the race course. When we got out there close to noon, it started filling in. The first two races Sunday filled in at seven to nine knots with a super sunny sky, which was really nice. And then for the final race, it built to 12 knots. We stretched the race course out a little bit, longer legs, and we had great four leg racing in 10 to 12 knots. It was really good."

As with any well known invitational regatta, competition going into the Lipton Cup was stiff. San Diego Yacht Club's Skipper Jake La Dow and two of his crew members, Max Hutcheson and Lucy Wallace, recently won the 2025 Rolex New York Yacht Club Invitational Cup in September, and Skipper Chris Raab from Alamitos Yacht Club was fresh off of his win in the 2025 Don Trask International Masters Regatta the weekend prior.

2025 Lipton Cup Regatta - photo © Mark Albertazzi

After 3 days, 12 races, and some drastic shifts on the leaderboard throughout the last day of racing, San Diego Yacht Club, who was neck and neck with Newport Harbor Yacht Club through the last leg of the final race, squeaked out a first place finish for the fifth year in a row.

When asked about his strategy going into the final race day, SDYC's Jake La Dow, stated "At the beginning of the day, we had a little bit of a lead on the fleet other than Newport Harbor. And so our eyes were set on them. We didn't necessarily want to engage them aggressively in the start, but we wanted to keep aware of them on the race course. We found ourselves both towards the back of the pack in race one and we ended up putting a couple of points on them. Both of us finishing deep opened up the field for Coronado in New York to be more in the mix, which wasn't part of the plan. Race two, we didn't quite get off the line very well, and we lost a little bit of that lead, but were still in the fight. In race three we had a good start, just enough to be ahead of Newport early in the race. And we got into a controlling position and it was close the whole way, but we were just able to stay in front and control the rest of the race. It was very close and Newport Harbor did extremely well."

2025 Lipton Cup Regatta - photo © Mark Albertazzi

Newport Harbor Yacht Club, who had maintained the overall lead in the regatta after race days 1 and 2, took second place, just 3 points behind SDYC. Newport Harbor has been a strong contender in the Lipton Cup regatta over the years finishing 3rd in 2024, 2nd in 2023, 6th in 2022 and 4th in 2021. While they just missed the win this year, Skipper Justin Law eloquently stated "As always, the Lipton Cup is one of the best events a sailor can do all year. We always look forward to coming back. A huge shoutout to my team. We're always trying to push the limits. I think we accomplished making San Diego nervous, which is always my goal." Coronado Yacht Club skippered by Scott Harris held steady at third place throughout the weekend and significantly tightened the gap with the top two teams. CYC secured third place in the regatta while taking the race 10 win to start the day Sunday. After the points were totalled, San Diego Yacht Club won with 54 points, Newport Yacht Club took second with 57 points, and Coronado Yacht Club came in third with 63 points.

2025 Lipton Cup Regatta - photo © Mark Albertazzi

11 of the 12 teams had raced in the Lipton Cup regatta in years prior, but this was the first edition for Bayview Yacht Club. When asked about his first experience racing in the Lipton Cup Skipper Hanson Bratton stated "It wound up being a lot of fun. We as a crew have sailed a lot of different events, and this is one of the top events that we've been to. It's so well organized and people are so friendly. It was certainly worth the trip out here. We had a lot to learn, and we did learn a lot. It's something that we couldn't really practice for properly because we weren't familiar with the conditions out here, so that put us in a little bit of a disadvantage, but we really enjoyed a very competitive scene. We hope to be invited back next year."

A big thank you goes out to Event Chair Dave Vieregg for putting together another memorable regatta, the SDYC race committee, umpires, and volunteers who made sure everything ran smoothly from start to finish, and our SDYC J/105 owners who graciously loaned out their boats in support of this event.

Thank you to our dedicated sponsors, who make events like this one possible: Helly Hansen, Bay Club Hotel and Marina, Chipz Happen, Bella Luna Wines, North Sails and Quantum Sails.

Overall Results: