Racing at Port Credit Yacht Club: A Season on Lake Ontario

Port Credit Yacht Club racing fills the calendar from the season's first gun to its last, a mix of weeknight club races, distance classics, and junior regattas that has been building for most of the Club's 90 years. Some of these events are older than the clubhouse additions built around them, passed from one race committee to the next long enough to become as much a part of PCYC's identity as the harbour itself.

A Trophy Race Older Than Most of the Fleet

The Susan Hood Trophy Race has run every spring since 1955, an overnight offshore challenge that shakes down boats and crews at the start of the season. PCYC member Doug Hood created it to support a fairer handicapping system for custom-built racer-cruisers, working alongside yacht designer George Cuthbertson on what became the Lake Ontario Rule, and named the trophy for his daughter Susan. The original course ran from Port Credit to Oakville, on to Port Dalhousie, and back. Decades later, now scored under PHRF, the race still rewards the same thing it always has: an efficient, competitive night on the water that fits inside a busy season rather than swallowing an entire weekend.

Longer Water for the Sailors Who Want It

For crews chasing a bigger test, the Lake Ontario 300/600 Challenge starts and finishes right at PCYC, the longest annual freshwater race anywhere and one of the most demanding offshore events on the continent since its founding in 1990. LOSHRS, the Lake Ontario Short Handed Racing Series, has run alongside it since 1997, a proving ground for single- and double-handed sailors that has shaped racers such as Derek Hatfield over more than three decades of PCYC support. Add the PCYC Open's two days of course racing each summer and an annual leg of the AHMEN Racing Series, and a member between boats can still turn to the Club's own Crew Bank to find a ride and a spot on deck.

SEE THE RACING CALENDAR
See the full racing calendar and registration links on our Racing & Events page. pcyc.net/racing-regattas

A Regatta Built for the Next Generation

Junior sailing has its own long-running fixtures. First sailed in 1959, the Steerers' Invitational ranks among Canada's longest-running youth sailing events, now drawing junior sailors from across the country and, this year as in others, from all over the United States as well, its trophy carved from a wooden Nutshell rudder and awarded on a formula that rewards broad participation as much as podium finishes. The Four Sisters Open grew out of the Millennium Regatta first sailed at PCYC in 2000, its name honouring both the four smokestacks of the old Lakeview Generating Station and the mothers and aunts who quietly hold a family's sailing season together. This July, PCYC also hosted the 2026 C420 Open North American Championship, placing the Club among a select group trusted to run a championship of that scale.

SEE YOUTH RACING
Curious what junior racing looks like at PCYC? Visit our Youth Racing Program page. pcyc.net/youth-racing

Ninety Years of the Same Starting Gun

The boats, the ratings systems, and the sailors standing at the helm have all changed since 1955. What has stayed constant is a Club willing to run a race committee, ready a course, and welcome a fleet, season after season, on the same stretch of Lake Ontario.

EXPLORE PCYC
See what makes PCYC home for racers and cruisers alike on our Why PCYC page. pcyc.net/why-pcyc