Report on ILCA 4 Youth Worlds - 19-26 July 2025

Cabrillo Beach Yacht Club, Los Angeles

Charlotte Jenkins reports

During our winter holidays (plus the first week of school), four DBSC youth members were lucky enough to escape the cold, rainy weather and spend some time training and then racing at the ILCA 4 Youth World Championships, in Los Angeles, California. The regatta was hosted by Cabrillo Beach Yacht Club, and we launched from the neighbouring Cabrillo Beach Youth Waterfront Sports Centre/Boy Scout Camp, which took about an hour to sail (or half an hour to tow) past the sea wall and out to the racecourse.

We spent four days training with SailCoach, where, as the ‘Down Under’ group, we would start the session with speed-testing lineups to correct our setup and posture, then later join the internationals in short practice races on a start line of 30-50 boats. Back on land, we had detailed video debriefs from Canadian ILCA 7 sailor and coach James Juhasz, who also shared examples from his training group to demonstrate the skills we needed to improve on. 

The regatta consisted of six intense days of racing, with two races completed to schedule each day (including one treacherous race which lasted almost 90 minutes with the first boat reaching the top mark within a minute of the time limit). The first two days were light-moderate while the others provided what I would describe as perfect hiking and surfing conditions (Zoe might disagree as she preferred the lighter air). The course also had painfully strong tide of up to 12 boat lengths a minute (= 1.6 kts), which created huge line sag at the starting line and chaos at the top mark with underlaid boats. Luckily we were only postponed out on the water a few times while waiting for the sea breeze to kick in a couple of hours after the morning smog cleared, or when the robot marks refused to cooperate and forced the race committee into a game of hide and seek. 

The Australian team consisted of 7 boys and 7 girls, of which 2 boys (Raphael McLachlan and Tucker McKeon) and 2 girls (Charlotte Jenkins and Zoe Allen) are from DBSC. The boys fleet had a total of 140 sailors, and the girls fleet had a total of 100 sailors. Both fleets were split into halves for qualifying and final races. 

After 12 races, the final results were:

Boys fleet (140):

91st Raphael McLachlan

118th Tucker McKeon

Girls fleet (100):

53rd Charlotte Jenkins

92nd Zoe Allen

Photos courtesy of SailCoach, or as marked