Melges 24 World Championship — A Brisk Battle

San Francisco Bay is often a long way to travel to in order to compete in a class world championship, but smart sailors know it’s worth it. This year, the always-competitive and high-performance Melges 24 class traveled here to have their world championship, hosted by the San Francisco Yacht Club (SFYC). It was a hotly contested event raced on a breezy, sparkling Berkeley Circle.

After everyone came in off the rails of the last race, two Midwestern teams and one California team took the top three podium positions. Don Wilson and his Convexity team from the Chicago Yacht Club captured the 2024 Diversified Melges 24 World Champions title. Racing with Wilson were tactician Jeremy Wilmot and crew members Ian Liberty, Edward Hackney, and Tomas Dietrich. They worked hard and pulled it off with a single point separating them from the second-place finisher.

In second place was 2009 US Sailing Rolex Yachtsman of the Year Bora Gulari, from Bayview Yacht Club in Detroit, with his crew aboard Kingspoke. Recently crowned US National Champion Geoff Fargo, helming Sentinel from the Santa Barbara Yacht Club, locked in a solid third-place finish.

The Corinthian Division was won for the second year in a row by Ante Botica and his crew, Ivo Matic, Mario Skrlj, Samir Civadelic and Boris Bakotic, all of whom traveled from Croatia to win aboard Mataran 24. The last US winner of the Corinthian Division was San Francisco Yacht Club staff commodore Don Jesberg, who won the event when it was last hosted by SFYC in 2013. Second place in the Corinthian Division (15th overall) was Duane Yoslov’s Looper with his crew: his son Caleb Yoslov, James Golden, Ellise Smolenyak and Noah Barrengos. Kent Pierce’s Average, with crew David Ryan Eastwood, Eric Stokke, Claire Hunt and Tristan Richmond, from the Santa Barbara Yacht Club, placed third in Corinthian (16th overall).

The final one-point separation at the top of the fleet wasn’t settled until Wilson and Gulari battled it out in the last two races of the event. After four days of fiercely competitive, windy racing on the Berkeley Circle, the fifth and final day delivered a dramatic showdown between Convexity and Kingspoke. With only one point separating the two, the stakes were sky-high going into the final race.

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