Chris Lewis and his Qubit team captured the 2025 IC37 North American Championship by the narrowest of margins Sunday, finishing just one point ahead of a three-way tie for second place after a dramatic final race on Rhode Island Sound.
Starting the day’s racing, four teams were within three points of the lead. When the fleet crossed the finish line, Lewis’ team had secured the title with 20 points, while Patrick Shanahan and Wes Bright’s Bronco, Steve Liebel’s New Wave and John Hele’s Vigilant all finished tied on 21 points. Bronco took second on tiebreakers, New Wave placed third and Vigilant fourth.
“It’s a relief,” said Lewis, who hadn’t won since the 2022 Annual Regatta. “I’ve been racing for 55 years, and I don’t remember a championship with such a close finish.”
The veteran sailor credited consistency as the key to victory. Qubit posted finishes of 3-3-4-4-1-5-5 across the seven-race series held at the New York Yacht Club Harbour Court from Thursday through Sunday.
Lewis and his crew faced intense pressure at the start of Sunday’s finale, with several championship contenders battling for position at the committee boat end of the line.
“New Wave schooled me,” Lewis said. “I had to start on their stern, and we just tacked around the anchor chain of the committee boat, took off to the right and tried to get clear air.”
At the final windward mark, the Qubit crew executed a Sambuca — combining a spinnaker set with a jibe — and worked the wind shifts on the downwind leg to secure a fifth-place finish and the championship.
“In sailboat racing, it doesn’t always go your way,” Lewis said. “We just have to keep grinding it out, working, thinking positive. Kudos to my team. These boats are a team effort. The helm gets the glory, but it’s every single person on these boats that leads to a top performance.”
Shanahan, whose Bronco team also claimed top Corinthian honors in the North Americans, acknowledged the challenge of managing a young crew while balancing work commitments.
“It’s been a very stressful process at times,” said Shanahan, who recently transitioned from collegiate dinghy sailing. “We’re young, we’ve got to take time off from work to sail, so you need to get people who can fill in here and there. You don’t get a lot of practice time.”
Starting the final race two points behind the leader, Bronco had no clear tactical path to victory with so many boats in contention.
“Our tactician Ford McCann said, ‘Every time I look at scores, it just comes down to, OK, let’s go out there and have the best race we can,'” Shanahan said. “On the last downwind, I think we got one or two boats right at the end. Today, that was everything.”
Bill Zartler’s Voodoo Too rounded out the top five with 23 points.
In the overall 2025 IC37 Summer Series standings, New Wave finished first, Qubit second and Bronco third. Evan Cooke and Wade Waddell’s Pegasus won the IC37 Corinthian Season Championship, while Liebel received the Commodore Lotz Trophy for Contributions to the IC37 Class.
The 2026 IC37 summer schedule will be announced later this fall.