2026 Huntington Lake Regatta
July 25 & 26
The festivities started on Friday afternoon with boats out practicing and tuning together. Afterwards the group gathered at baby beach for traditional Mai Tia’s normally provided by Tom Priest. However, Tom and Laura could not attend this year and the Baldwin’s did a fine job with their version of a “Mai Tai” and the Whelan’s provided some fine Kirkland Margarita’s.
Baby Beach has a whole new generation of young ones, with Lanzafame grandkids, Hopper grandkids, 2 young Goodman kids and making her first trip to baby beach was Katie and Kody’s new daughter Evelyn almost 7 months old. Quite a scene.
Race 1 was course 4, marks 5,1,3,8, finish with all marks to port. With 16 boats on the starting line some good racing was about to begin. Randy Hecht and Scott Whitney got off the line with a good start and lead the fleet up the lake, with John & Michael Ravizza in pursuit. Following were Chris and Robert Lanzafame, Bill Schopp and Richard Welsh. With a close group rounding mark 1, Shaum Sinawi and Brendan Bradley went toward the south shore, while others played the center, Shaum found his way into 2nd place.
Race 1 top finishers were Randy Hecht 471, Shaum Sinawi 463, John Ravizza 537, Chris Lanzafame 569, Bill Schopp 572.
Race 2 Same course 4 and similar order after the start. Randy Hecht, Shaum Sinawi, and John Ravizza lead the fleet around the course, except Don Whelan and Jack Henry finished in 4th, Jim and Kathy Bradley were 5th, followed by Chris Davis and Bill Worden.
Race 3 again used course 4. Ben Bradley and Bill Schopp got across the Lake toward the Boy Scout Camp and led off that shore. However, Ravizza overtook them as did Whelan to lead the way up to mark 5. Approaching mark 5, Whelan was able to cross Ravizza and round the mark first. Ravizza got to the left and passed Whelan going to mark 1 after rounding mark 3, Jim Bradley turned up the speed and passed Whelan before getting to mark 8 and finished 2nd.
Race 3 finish order Ravizza, Jim Bradley, Whelan, Schopp, and Ben Bradley.
Ravizza beat Hecht by 1 pt to win the Bill Bradley Trophy. Notice how close the scores are as you go down the results. This is common in the Mercury Fleet and one of the things that makes our racing so much fun.
Saturday night dinner was a huge success and good dinner put on by Lakeshore and of course entertainment by the Lanzafame Family Band.
Big thanks to Chris Krueger for the nice trophies, Matt Jones for running our races and to Peter and Lynn Baldwin for all their work in putting this together.
See you next year!!
Article by Don Whelan
Pictures by Barbara Whelan