Diamond Island Yacht Club, Point Bay Marina host 14th annual Diamond Island Regatta, supporting the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum
CHARLOTTE/FERRISBURGH, Vt.— In Homer’s The Odyssey, Aeolus is the ruler of the winds. To ensure a safe passage home for Odysseus and his crew, Aeolus provided them with a bag containing all but the fair winds they would need. When almost home, so close the sailors could smell fresh bread being baked ashore, Odysseus’s men, thinking the bag contained treasure, opened it, and the winds blew their ship all the way back to Aeolus’s home island of Aeolia. Aeolus sent them on their way, but without any of his precious wind.
Aeolus does not make an appearance in the Christopher Nolan film The Odyssey, but Aeolus and various other wind gods are in the prayers each year of Race Director Wendy Friant—and all the sailors—in the days leading up to the Diamond Island Regatta, held on the waters of Lake Champlain off Ferrisburgh and Charlotte.
For the 14th edition of the Diamond Island Regatta on August 15, and the Split Rock Race the next day, all prayers were answered. The DIR featured a strong north wind, with a steady 15 knots and gusts well over 20. And on Sunday, the race began in a moderate southerly, and the wind blew hard throughout the day.
The races are organized by the Diamond Island Yacht Club and Point Bay Marina in Charlotte and benefit the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Ferrisburgh. Again this year, the regatta raised thousands of dollars for the museum. The money raised – via the pre-race breakfast, T-shirt and hat sales, a fundraising raffle with prizes donated by the event’s many sponsors, and a silent auction for winter boat storage—is still being tallied but is expected to exceed $4,000.
On Saturday morning, 27 boats were on the starting line for the Diamond Island Regatta, which took them on a course of about 11 nautical miles, from the start/finish line in Town Farm Bay, north to a mark just south of Sloop Island off Charlotte, south to Diamond Island off Ferrisburgh, and then back north to the finish. The race started in a moderate breeze, which built throughout the race. Gusts over 20 knots were common—as were (mostly minor) equipment issues.
The next day, 18 boats started the sixth annual Split Rock Race, in a south wind, following a course of about 13 nautical miles from the start/finish line in Town Farm Bay south to Diamond Island, north to a mark off Cannon Point just south of Essex, N.Y., back to Diamond Island and then north to the finish.
Boats came from all over the lake for the weekend of racing, with sailors from, among other places, the host Diamond Island Yacht Club (DIYC) in Charlotte; the Lake Champlain Yacht Club (LCYC) in Shelburne; the Malletts Bay Boat Club (MBBC) in Colchester; and as far away as Quebec. Both races are part of the Lake Champlain Championship Series, a season-long competition to determine the winners in six classes: three Spinnaker classes (A, B and C), two Jib-and-Main (JaM) classes (A and B), and a multihull class. The races are scored using the PHRF (Performance Handicap Racing Fleet) system, so boats with different speed potentials can compete against each other. Each boat’s elapsed time for the course is turned into a “corrected” time to determine the winners in each class.
The first boat to finish in the Diamond Island Regatta on Saturday, in 1 hour, 39 minutes and 56 seconds, was Odinn, a J/111, 36 feet long, captained by Kjell Dahlen. On corrected time, the top three finishers were all J/105s, 34-foot sloops, from LCYC. The winner was MOOvin’ Up sailed by John Harris and Doug Merrill. Second went to Jeff Hill’s Foxy Lady, and the third-place finisher was Rogue, captained by Walt Marti. First place in the Spinnaker B class went to Lift Ticket, a J/92S, 30 feet long, captained by Sam Pratt from MBBC. Second was Enki, a C&C 99, 32 feet long, captained by Cindy Turcotte, and third was Benedek Erdos, sailing In Progress, an Express 34 from MBBC. The Spinnaker C class went to Tom Porter, who sails at both DIYC and LCYC, on Osprey, a C&C 33 MKII.
In the jib-and-main classes, Slingshot, a J/30 captained by Fritz Martin of DIYC, came out on top in JaM A, followed by AJA, an Ericson 33 sailed by Michael McGrath and Stephanie Cramer in second and Hot Chocolate, a J/9, 28 feet long, captained by Jim Lampman of DIYC, in third. Salsa, an Ericson 34 captained by Sean Linsky from DIYC, was the winner in JaM B, with Mackinac, a Pearson 32 sailed by Tim and Betsy Etchells of DIYC in second. In third was Allison B, a Morris 29 captained by Lex Birney from DIYC.
In Sunday’s Split Rock Race, the win in the Spinnaker A class went to Foxy Lady, followed by MOOvin’ Up. In third was Lisa J., a Farr 30 captained by Tris Coffin, representing both LCYC and MBBC. In Spinnaker B, Lift Ticket completed a weekend sweep, followed by In Progress and Enki. Tom Porter in Osprey won the Spinnaker C class. The Multihull class in the Split Rock Race went to Shoshin, an F25C trimaran captained by Tim McKegney, which zipped around the course nearly half an hour ahead of the fastest monohulls.
In the Jib and Main classes on Sunday, AJA came out on top in JaM A, with Slingshot second and Schuss, a J/30 sailed by MBBC’s Cameron Giezendanner, in third. In JaM B, the winner was Julie Trottier of MBBC, sailing Meridian.
Full results can be found at the DIYC website: https://diamondislandyc.org/dir-srr-results-for-2026/
The post-race party on Saturday afternoon under the DIYC tent at Point Bay included live music by Bob “Cooper” Recupero and a slideshow created by race photographer Lea Ann Smith (lsmithphotography.com), who made hundreds of photos of the event available to the racers: You can check them out here. Special thanks to Tom and Dianne Curran who provided the photo boat, Well Adjusted, for Lea Ann, expertly managing wind and waves to get her in position for some great shots.
The party also included a presentation by LCMM’s Paul Gates, Director of Archaeology, who touched on the Revolutionary War-era ship Liberty, represented on this year’s regatta T-shirt, and discussed the new exhibit at the museum, “Fragments.” It tells the story of the Revolutionary War in the Champlain Valley by focusing on individuals who lived through it. Next came the awards ceremony and the Lobster Fest dinner, with winning raffle tickets drawn throughout for prizes from event sponsors, all to benefit the museum. Sailors also took part in a silent auction for reduced winter storage rates donated by Point Bay Marina, Safe Harbor Shelburne Shipyard, Moorings Malletts Bay and Plattsburgh Boat Basin, which brought in more money for LCMM.
In addition to the marinas and the LCMM, other sponsors included: Basin Harbor Club, Ferrisburgh; Safe Harbor Willsboro Bay, N.Y.; Burlington Harbor Marina; Helly Hansen; Ace Hardware & Marine, Malletts Bay; Aubuchon Hardware, Vergennes; Shaw’s in Vergennes; Rozzi’s Lakeshore Tavern, Colchester; Flip Flops on the Dock, Plattsburgh, N.Y.; Lea Ann Smith Photography, Burlington; Amalgamated Culture Works, Burlington; JV Embroidery, Charlotte; Backyard Bistro, Charlotte; Barkeaters Restaurant, Shelburne; The Old Dock Waterfront Restaurant, Essex, N.Y.; and Zero Gravity Craft Brewery, Burlington.
The Saturday and Sunday races were both overseen by DIR/SRR Race Director Wendy Friant from the committee boat, Rosie, a Lord Nelson Tug owned and captained by Will Patten, a former DIYC commodore. Dozens of other DIYC volunteers worked tirelessly, on and off the water, to makeall the weekend events possible.
And Aeolus, thank the gods, delivered the wind.