Sail Racing and the Racing Fleets

South Shore Yacht Club has a long and distinguished tradition of sponsoring and encouraging sail racing. The racing program includes a full range of activities, all scheduled, promoted and supervised by the Sail Race Committee, chaired by Ken Dziubek who serves on the Board of Directors.

The Club currently has two handicap fleets - SS/SSS & PHRF, and two one-design fleets- Laser and Tartan 10 which race regularly. Each fleet elects a Fleet Captain to represent it and to organize it's activities.

SS/SSS (South Shore Social Sailing Series) consists of both cruising and one-design yachts which race together on Wednesday nights. The fleet is divided into three divisions based solely on overall length and handicap. The fourth and fifth divisions are the JAM divisions and open to members who want to sail solely with Jib and Main. The yachts are scored using a custom handicapping program that encourages participation by yachts that are not interested in the more serious racing programs.

The Performance Handicap Racing Fleet is made up of cruising boats that race on weekends. There are both course and distance races scheduled throughout the summer. Division splits are by handicap. The PHRF Fleet is the largest racing fleet on Milwaukee Bay. These ultra competitive skippers race together with PHRF yachts from Milwaukee Yacht Club, and the two clubs split sponsorship of the seasons' races equally.

The Milwaukee Bay Laser Fleet represents the fastest growing one design sailing in Milwaukee Bay. In its fourth season of organized racing, the fleet saw 43 sailors register and race with consistently 20 to 25 out sailing every week. The fleet strategically chose Tuesday nights for race night to not compete with Wednesdays or Weekends. Racing is done in the center of the inner harbor, and race committee duties are shared with Milwaukee Yacht Club, South Shore Yacht Club and Milwaukee Community Sailing Center. For more information about the fleet go to http://home.wi.rr.com/soling/ or for further information, contact: Bill Goggins at billg@harken.com or Mike Blumberg at REPEQU@aol.com

The T-10's are one of our most active one-design fleets. Having competed successfully for years in the PHRF fleet, they have recently decided to compete solely against each other in one-design racing.

The Snipe Fleet is the Club’s newest one design racing fleet. The Snipe is a high performance, two person craft. SSYC’s fleet has 20 ‘Social Races’ scheduled for Monday evenings. SSYC Fleet members use these races primarily to hone skills for association sanctioned regattas. South Shore Yacht Club’s Fleet, although relatively new has made its mark by winning regional and national regattas. The National Snipe fleet boasts Masters, Womens, Juniors and even International competitions. For information on their fleet contact Mike Blackwood, Fleet Captain.

Our Club is known throughout the Great Lakes as an active sail racing Yacht Club, and over the years, members of SSYC have done well in regional, national and international competition. It's significant that of the more than 300 sailboat owners in the Club, nearly 35% were registered in a racing fleet last year, and that nearly 45% of the Club's sailboats have raced at one time or another.

Click Here for Notice of Races, Race Manuals and other related documentation.

Click Here for the Milwaukee Bay racing schedules.