After an exciting weekend of tight racing in quintessential San Diego weather, the 110th Challenge for the Sir Thomas Lipton Cup concluded at San Diego Yacht Club on Sunday, October 26, 2026. The prestigious, invitational-only regatta brought together 12 highly competitive yacht club teams from across the United States and Mexico to race in J/105s. “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,” said Regatta Chair Dave Vieregg.

As with any well-known invitational regatta, competition was stiff. SDYC’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, and Skipper Chris Raab from Alamitos Yacht Club was fresh off his win in the 2025 Don Trask International Masters Regatta. Of the 12 teams, 11 had raced in years prior and five were also ICOYC Member Clubs: Long Beach Yacht Club, New York Yacht Club, Newport Harbor Yacht Club, San Diego Yacht Club and San Francisco Yacht Club.

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

When asked about his strategy going into the final race day, SDYC’s La Dow said, “At the beginning of the day, we had a little bit of a lead on the fleet other than Newport Harbor, 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 racecourse.”

FULL RESULTS >> https://sailing.sdyc.org/assets/results/results25/2025_Lipton_Cup.html