2025-26 SORC finishes with Nassau Cup
3 March 2026 - Bahamas, USA - The fourth and final stage of this winter season’s Southern Ocean Racing Conference (SORC) concluded last weekend with the Miami-Nassau Race, one of the oldest races of the series, having been first sailed in 1934. David Fass and his team on the Swan 42 ZAMMERMOOS have entered the history books by winning this race in both elapsed and corrected time, joining a long list of SORC racing legends from yesteryear that have done the same, including Ted Turner, Dennis Connor, Burt Keenan, Ted Irwin, George Coumantaros and many others.
Starting in Miami, Nassau Cup teams race a challenging 171-mile course that leaves South Florida to cross the notorious Gulf Stream eastward to the Bahamas, leaving Great Isaacs Light to starboard and proceeding past Great Stirrup Light, finally finishing at Nassau harbor. Conditions this year were mostly upwind in light to moderate conditions, with ZAMMERMOOS achieving an elapsed time of 28H 46M 18S.
While this was not anywhere near the course record of 9H 20M 49S set last year by Hap Fauth’s Botin Maxi BELLA MENTE, ZAMMERMOOS’s time was within only 16 minutes of the predicted elapsed time generated by the ORC’s Weather Routing Scoring (WRS) method using a GFS grib file. WRS scoring was also used in the second event in the series, the 160-mile Ft Lauderdale to Key West Race sailed in January with the others being scored from among the ORC USA certificate scoring options.
On the strength of achieving overall wins in the first two events of the series - the 80-mile Sailor’s Choice Race held in the Gulf Stream waters between south Florida and the Bahamas and the 60-mile Miami-Palm Beach Race - Trey Sheehan’s team on his Melges 32 HOOLIGAN: FLAT STANLEY RACING is the overall champion of the 2025-26 Islands in the Stream series. Their score line of 1-1-(9)-7 was just one point ahead of runner-up MARGOT, Peter & Dina Wright’s NEO 430 Roma based in Chicago whose scores in the series were 4-(13)-3-3.
In its 10th year as a series, this year a total of 25 teams participated, with over half these entries based in the snowy North and chose to escape the winter and compete against Florida-based talent in the warm waters of the Gulf Stream.
In 2027 the SORC will partner with the Storm Trysail Club to start the series with inshore and offshore racing as the 2027 ORC North American Championship held in Ft Lauderdale in November 2027.
Photos and results for each event are at https://www.sorcsailing.org.
SORC Islands in the Stream Series (top five):
- HOOLIGAN: FLAT STANLEY RACING Melges 32 Trey Sheehan 1 - 1 - (9) - 7 9 points
- MARGOT Neo 430 Roma Peter & Dina Wright 4 - (13) - 3 - 3 10 points
- IMPETUOUS Swan 42 Paul Zabetakis (11) - 5 - 6 - 2 13 points
- ZAMMERMOOS Swan 42 David Fass 11 - (18) - 2 - 1 14 points
- MERIDIAN XI Carkeek 40 Graham Garrenton 11 - 4 - 1 - (15) 16 points
