Brian Doyle and team Steve Kirkpatrick, Hannah Swett, and Shane Wells broke away from a tight cluster at the top on the last day to win the 2026 US Adult Sailing Championship for the Clifford D. Mallory Trophy. The team represents their RSA Northeast Sailing Association, and are members of Lake Sunapee Yacht Club and New York Yacht Club.
The Southern California Yachting Association team out of Alamitos Bay Yacht Club, made up of Ed Feo, Greg Naiman, Michael Oliver, and Susannah Pyatt, won the Staton J. Peele Sportsmanship Trophy after nominations from fellow competitors and race officials. Feo has won it before, when the event was held at Bay-Waveland Yacht Club in 2022.
Eleven teams from eight states competed for three days, Thursday-Saturday, in a full round-robin on Galveston Bay in host Lakewood Yacht Club’s fleet of RS 21s.
The event’s eleven races had eight different winners. “This fleet was competitive. It’s not often you can win an event with a last place finish like we had, especially with no throw-outs,” Brian Doyle said. “We appreciate sailing these US Sailing championships around the country with the boats being so equal as we rotate through. The race organizers and host club did a fantastic job with this event, and the sailors were all competitive on the water and friendly on shore.”
Just one point separated the top three places going into the final day of racing, with three races sailed in fluctuating breeze. The majority of teams traded places during the final day.
“We had upwind speed,” said Doyle on Saturday. “All four of us were working hard at changing gears on every bit of equipment we could change. It was especially important today with the wind going from 4 to 8 knots and down. We also were able to take advantage of the 10- to 15-degree wind shifts we saw on the course.”
The Action
The first day of racing on Thursday set the tone for the event with four different teams notching wins in the five races that day: Doyle and team with two wins, and Feo, Mike Mergenthaler (South Atlantic YRA), and Patrick Hitchins (Texas Sailing Association) and their teams with one win each.
Principal Race Officer Ellen Pesch, joined by deputy Race Officer Shannon Bush and their team of LYC volunteers, ran the first two races in a southeasterly, which eventually dipped to just above 4 knots. Once the sea breeze kicked in, three more races were held, completing nearly half of the planned round robin in 7-9 knots.
The fleet was incredibly tight, with up to three boats finishing overlapped with each other in multiple races. At the end of the first day, only a few points separated most of the standings.
On Day Two, the Race Committee delayed on shore as Galveston Bay offered early morning fog and glassy waters. Race 6 got underway in the early afternoon with a relatively steady 5 knots from roughly the same southeast direction as the first day. Rudi Arntson and his team of Dirk Richter, Angelina Norris, and Ian Paice (Sailing Association of Intermountain Lakes) won, garnering the team’s first race win of the event.
After Race 6, race officials were concerned that a dying breeze and bigger directional oscillations would end the day after only one race, but the wind settled in and Race 7 saw Doyle’s Northeast Sailing Association team claim their third bullet of the event. Taking advantage of 6- to 7-knots of wind, PRO Pesch and her team decided to push through Race 8, which Van Vliet won as the sun drifted down toward the Texas mainland horizon.
In Saturday’s first race, Doyle was the seventh boat around the first leeward mark but fought back to a second-place finish. His crew uttered “blind squirrel” after the finish as they moved into the lead, surpassing YRA of San Francisco Bay team Jasper Van Vliet, Courtney Clamp, Adam Corpuz-Lahne, and Will Paulsen, who finished seventh in the same race.
Going into Race 10, Patrick Hitchins and team Blake Billman and Mark Hulings sat in second place in the standings but were over early at the start and couldn’t recover. Meanwhile, Doyle and his crew won Race 10 and had a six-point cushion over Van Vliet going into the final race.
The regatta’s 11th and final race came after a slow, persistent right shift and light breeze that settled in at about 7 knots and softened during the race. At the first windward mark, Doyle rounded in sixth and moved up through the fleet to finish in second and cement the victory.
Terry Flynn and his team of Brett Allred, Allie Cribbs, and Matt Romberg sat 9 points out of third place going into Saturday. Consistent performance in challenging conditions enabled them to climb onto the podium. They narrowly beat out Hitchins and team by just one point to tie with Van Vliet, who won the tie break.
Throughout the event, PRO Pesch and her team kept the courses competitive with minimal delay between races for boat rotations.
“Galveston Bay threw everything at us but the Lakewood Yacht Club Race Committee team on the signal and mark boats worked hard to give the competitors fair and fun racing,” she said. “It was a great event and represents what all of these US Championships strive to do: provide competitive one-design sailing for teams from around the country.”
The Podium:
- Skipper Brian Doyle with crew Steve Kirkpatrick, Hannah Swett, and Shane Wells representing the Northeast Sailing Association.
2. Skipper Jasper Van Vliet with crew Courtney Clamp, Adam Corpuz-Lahne, and Will Paulsen, representing the Yacht Racing Association of San Francisco Bay.
3. Skipper Terry Flynn and crew Brett Allred, Allie Cribbs, and Matt Romberg, representing the Texas Sailing Association
Full results: https://theclubspot.com/regatta/v4ApdZNhSg/results
Thanks to our US Sailing sponsors, Pacific Life, Goslings, and Zhik, for supporting this Championship. Pacific Life, Presenting Partner of the US Sailing Team and Official Partner of US Sailing, is a proud sponsor of all US Sailing Championships as part of its broader commitment to supporting sailing, the sailing community, and promoting national-level competition. Participants also enjoyed Dark ‘n Stormys after racing, thanks to Goslings! Zhik, the technical apparel partner of US Sailing, awarded the lucky winners of the Adult Championship with a Zhik credit.