news@sunfishclass.org

ISCA Class Updates

• Pan American Games Update
• XXV Central American and Caribbean Games Santo Domingo 2026

ISCA Builder Updates

Major Championships

• North American Championship June 4-7
• USSCA NAs Young Adult Grant Application
• Youth North American Championship August 15-17
• US Masters September 11-13
• Women's North American Championship Oct. 9-11

USSCA Events - Save the date

• Upstate NY Regional Championship I, Rochester Canoe Club, NY, May 16-17
• Mid-Atlantic Regional Championship I, Lewes, Delaware, June 20-21
• ISCA/Sunfish(R) Scramble @ Hobcaw YC, May 30th 
• Southeast Regional Championship, Beaufort Yacht and Sailing Club, SC, June 27-28

Regatta News & Sailing Reports

• Curacao Regatta with Tribute to Jan van Meurs
• Gulf Coast Regional Report

Grow Your Fleet/Region

• How to Run a Recruitment Clinic

North Americans Revisited 51 years later 

USSCA News

• USSCA Annual Meeting
• USSCA Nominations for Leadership

Pan Am Sailing has announced the list of events to be used to qualify countries for the SAILING (Vela) events at the Lima 2027 Pan Am Games. The ISCA Leadership is very pleased that eight sailors in the Men's and Women's divisions will be participating at the 2027 PAG Sailing event in Lima from July 23 - August 8, 2027. Full qualification document will be published soon. Please see the PAG page on the class website: sunfishclass.org/2027panamgames. PAG Sailing notice: FULL DOCUMENT posted April 21, 2026 

USSCA is pleased to announce that thanks to an anonymous donor, four grants are available for Young Adults age 19 to 25 to cover the full entry fee for the USSCA North American’s in Barrington, Rhode Island on June 4-7, 2026 as well as the USSCA membership fee if needed. The Young Adult age group includes individuals who will turn 19 by the end of 2026 through age 25 and who will not turn 26 by the end of 2026.  A grant application form is available on line at GRANT FORM. Applications will be reviewed to determine the grant recipients. The donor may also be able to provide an ISCA/Sunfish for the recipient to use during the North American's Regatta in June 2026. 

We would like to extend our sincere thanks to the donor who is making this possible. This will help raise awareness and interest in young adults, some of whom are currently or have recently enjoyed college sailing and are looking for accessible sailing after college. Our hope is to grow participation among this age group and share with them the joy of sailing in the USSCA class.

Tribute to Jan van Meurs

Thank you to everyone who participated in the 2026 Gulf Coast Regional Regatta. Special thanks to Eduardo Cordero for conducting a clinic on Friday afternoon. 

Pos, Sail, Boat Name (if any), Skipper, Yacht Club, Results, Total Points

1. 5281, Bandstand Disneyland, Eugene Schmitt, The Bay Waveland Yacht Cub, 3-1-[6]-1-1-1-2-2-1- ; 12  

2. 9501, Gummy de Milo, Andy Beeckman, NHYC, 1-[5]-1-2-4-3-5-5-2- ; 23  

3. 76188, Hal Gilreath, Florida YC, 2-3-[7]-7-5-6-1-1-4- ; 29  

4. Tba, Hank Saurage, Pontchartrain YC, [10]-9-3-6-2-2-3-3-5- ; 33  

5. 7500, Moe, Mark Kastel, La Crosse Sailing Club, 6-7-2-3-3-[8]-6-4-7- ; 38  

6. 81334, Griffin Sisk, Westhampton Yacht Squadron, [13]-10-10-5-12-5-8-6-3- ; 59  

7. 34, Sunfish, Clinton Edwards, Bay-Waveland YC, 9-11-8-8-10-4-4-8-[20]- ; 62T  

8. 2311, Ghosts, Elaine Parshall, Columbia Sailing Club, 8-6-9-4-7-7-12-[14]-9- ; 62T  

9. 8866, Something Fishy, Alfredo (Freddie) Sambolin, CRYC/USSC, 7-2-4-10-8-[17]-11-17-10- ; 69  

10. 81135, Bubbles, Mary Ellen Ingham, Sarasota SS & Rochester CC, 4-8-11-11-6-9-13-9-[18]- ; 71  

11. 176, Cheap Thrill, Steve Honour, Boca Ciega YC - USSCA Fleet 756, 12-4-5-9-[19]-12-16-11-8- ; 77  

12. 314, Greg Reardon, None, [14]-14-12-12-9-14-9-7-13- ; 90  

13. 81997, Stuart Adams, Fairhope Y.C., 11-13-13-14-14-11-[15]-15-12- ; 103  

14. 81798, Geritol Express, Peter Buckley, Grand Lagoon YC - Pensacola, 15-18-[19]-18-17-13-7-10-6- ; 104  

15. 77479, Sunfish, James Edwards, Bay-Waveland YC, 16-15-[17]-16-11-10-14-13-16- ; 111  

16. 283, Martin Borrallo, Punta Brava, 5-16-18-13-[28/OCS]-18-10-18-17- ; 115  

17. 6718, Don’t Look Now, Mark Heinold, GLYC, 17-12-15-17-15-16-[18]-16-14- ; 122  

18. 79197, Natalie Roy, BWYC, 18-19-[22]-19-18-21-17-12-11- ; 135  

19. 49214, Richard Prieto, Boca Ciega YC/Menantic YC, 20-17-[21]-20-16-19-19-19-15- ; 145  

20. 4557, Heather Baus, Grand Lagoon Yacht Club, [21]-20-14-21-13-20-20-20-19- ; 147  

21. 42563,  Ash Beatty, LCYC, 19-21-16-15-[28/OCS]-15-28/RET-28/DNS-28/DNS- ; 170  

22. 81018, Bruce Moritz, Halifax Sailing Assoc., 22-22-20-22-20-22-21-[28/DNS]-28/DNS- ; 177  

23. 97, Eduardo Cordero, BSC, [28/DNS]-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS- ; 224T  

24. 4556, Savannah Baus, Grand Lagoon Yacht Club, [28/DNS]-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS- ; 224T  

25. 81618, Kira Munger, Rochester Canoe Club, [28/DNS]-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS- ; 224T  

26. 81717, Laura Jeffers, Scuttlebutt Sailing Club, [28/DNS]-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS- ; 224T  

27. 81874, Don Packard, Epping Forest YC, [28/DNS]-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS-28/DNS- ; 224T  

Over the past year we launched a pilot program in the Midwest and Florida for outreach and training for people who know how to sail and love Sunfish, but have either never raced or feel insecure with their skills and knowledge.

I don’t have to tell most active racers that our sport has declined significantly over the last few decades. Whether it’s impoverishment in terms of time or limited financial resources, younger families have dropped out of the pipeline.

When we started experimenting with this concept last year, it was after recognizing that there are tens of thousands of Sunfish owners and enthusiasts around the country, many on a number of Facebook pages, and most of them don’t race.

This is a complicated sport. It can be intimidating to people who don’t know the rules or tactics.

Last summer in Ohio and Kentucky, and this spring in Florida, we ran clinics that focused on rules, tactics, boat handling, and boat tuning-preparation.

At Hueston Woods in Ohio, one of the most active fleets in the country, we ran a one-day clinic with a chalk talk on shore and then practice starts and races out on the water. It attracted participants from a number of surrounding states. The following day, beginning, intermediate, and more experienced sailors participated in a regatta.

The formula at Louisville, another iconic Sunfish fleet, was a bit different. With a two-day regatta starting about noon on Saturday, we held a one-and-a-half-hour shore session on Saturday morning. In addition to visitors attending the regatta because the training was offered, many existing club members at both Midwest clinics also participated.

The result is that we’ve gained a half dozen new boats racing at the fleet level with some of those folks now actively attending regattas. Most of our districts are small enough that if we add a handful of boats each year, we’ve made a material impact.

In Florida, a few dozen boats participated over two and a half days in a very successful clinic conducted by Steve Honour.  And more recently, another variation had a clinic starting at 3pm on Friday before a two-day regatta at the Gulf Coast Championships in Pensacola.

Peter Fraker, the Southeast representative for USSCA, is running a clinic called "From Square One" on May 16-17 at Atlanta Yacht Club. He will cover rigging, sailing instruction, and on the water coaching. MORE INFO

You don’t need to be a world champion to successfully conduct one of these clinics. But you should be a very experienced Sunfish racer.  And you can team up with others in your club or region to share cumulative knowledge.

We will be holding a roundtable discussion via conference call on Monday, May 11 at 8pm (Eastern). Steve and I will spend a few minutes outlining the formats and content we have used and then we will open it up for discussion, suggestions, and questions.

Please e-mail me and I will send you the call-in instructions: mak1954@mwt.net

Mark A. Kastel, Sunfish 7500

La Crosse Sailing Club, La Crosse, Wisconsin

Your hosts (both Grandmasters):

Steve Honour, an experienced sailor in keel boats and Sunfish, distinguished himself with a decisive win in the 2025 Masters midwinters championship. 

He has won the PHRF Boat of the Year award on Tampa Bay at the helm of his Cal 34. He has also sailed that boat to victories in the Clearwater and Naples to Key West offshore races. At his first International Sunfish Masters Championship in 1994, he finished second (by one point), losing in the last race to legendary Sunfish champion Joe Blovin.

Mark Kastel has sailed Sunfish since the mid-1960s, winning the 1971 Midwest Junior championship (80 boats on the line). His first instructor, on Lake Michigan at Winnetka, Illinois, was Major Hall, who would go on to become a North American champion. 

Back in its heyday, when the Penguin was the largest dinghy and frostbite class in the country, he was North American champion in 1975 and won the Internationals in 1990. After a 45-year hiatus racing other, larger boats, he jumped back in the Sunfish eight seasons ago and has since won regionals in the Midwest and Southwest.

Atlanta Yacht Club fleet racing!

By Joshua Gear

I raced in the Sunfish North American Championships when I was 14 years old. It was 1975, and that year the North Americans were held on Indian Lake in Ohio.

Next month, just over 50 years later, I plan to race in them again in Barrington, Rhode Island.

I was a nine-year-old third grader in the winter of 1969 when my mom moved a sister, a brother and me from our home in Maine to start spending the bulk of our winters in St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands with our new stepdad. I had seen very little outside of Maine before the move to St. Croix. It was my first time on an airplane, and I’d never been on a sailboat.

The next six years in St. Croix is when I learned to love to sail, and it’s where I learned to race Sunfish. I was the youngest of three sailors representing the St. Croix Yacht Club at that Sunfish North Americans in 1975. The other two were 15-year-old Jens Hookanson and 18-year-old Albert Lang.

Sunfish racers know about the “Jens” rig. Jens made it famous the following year at the 1976 North Americans, where he sailed as an adult. The winds were heavy that year at  Association Island, New York. Legend has it that Jens converted his rig on the water, the way we had often done on Teague Bay in front of he St. Croix Yacht Club. He went on win some races and the championship despite an overwhelming weight disadvantage.

Before Jens made it famous, we had dubbed it the “Lang Effect." Jens was athletic and even as a teenager, a gifted sailor, but Albert was the oldest of the three of us and easily the smartest. Back then I was a scrawny tag-along offering little more than enthusiasm and a desire to try to keep up. We were always looking for ways to stay ahead of the adults in the fleet, especially December through February when the Christmas Winds blew.  Albert’s Lang Effect was just one of many efforts.

I left St. Croix for good in the spring of 1976, just after my freshman year of high school. Moving back to New England full-time effectively ended my sailing career. But I always cherished my time on the water, the Crucian culture, the Caribbean Sea, the peace that comes with sailing and the thrill of racing.

Sailing had played such a pivotal role in my childhood that I wanted my own kids to share that experience. So when they were old enough, some 30 years after I had given it up, my children were introduced to sailing and then to racing at our small local yacht club in southern Maine. I was thrilled when all of them appreciated my passion.

Fast forward through their racing years, Optis, Lasers, 420s and then in high school and college. My efforts over the years at coaching evolved into encouragement as their skills surpassed mine. As they left the nest I felt the need to fill the void that their sailing had vicariously provided for me.

My family appreciated that need and encouraged me to get back into sailing for myself. My son’s Laser never felt comfortable to me so they found a good used Sunfish. 

Sailing my newly acquired Sunfish made me reminisce about my younger days of racing, but so much had changed. Back in the 70's we didn’t have a hiking strap, cunningham or adjustable outhaul.  Any modifications to our boats had to be done with equipment supplied by the manufacturer.  And back then we could add 20 kilos (44 pounds) of weight in the form of wet clothes, which we often did when the Christmas Winds blew in St. Croix.

I’m trying to re-learn how to make my Sunfish go fast, something that will always be a work in progress. I’ve found a number of resources but one of the best has been time on the water with the Barrington Frostbite group that sails out of Barrington Yacht Club in Rhode Island most Sundays between October and May. These Sunfish sailors and the race committee are enthusiastic and extremely talented, but best of all, they are very generous with their time and knowledge.

As I prepare for next month’s North Americans hosted by that same Barrington Yacht Club, I find myself thinking about how my life has unfolded in the 51 years since my last North Americans. I’ll always value the pivotal role the Sunfish has played in my life, how much has changed, and how much has stayed the same.

ISCA/USSCA Class Administrator

www.sunfishclass.org    info@sunfishclass.org  404-451-7743