Trophy Recipients
| Year | Name | Sail No | Event | Location | Place |
| 2023 | Maya Tatuch | CAN 433 | North Americans | Burlington, ON, Canada | 11th |
| 2022 | Katie Flood | USA 430 | Worlds | Clearwater, FL | 30th |
| 2021 | Katie Flood | USA 430 | Americas | Long Beach, CA | 13th |
| 2020 | No regatta due to COVID-19 Pandemic | ||||
| 2019 | Lise Duchesne | CAN 17 | North Americans | Detroit, MI | 10th |
Trophy History
The trophy was lovingly hand carved by Nora Zellmer in Sarasota Florida in 2019 based on a photo of Sandra racing with her distinctive ponytail flying from her cap. In a highly emotional ceremony, the trophy was first awarded to Lise Duchesne, the top woman helm at the F18 North American Championships held at the Crescent Sail Yacht Club in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan on September 14, 2019. There was no award of the trophy in 2020, as all major regattas were cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Award Criteria
The trophy is awarded annually to the top woman helm in the most important regatta for F18s in North America. This can be the US Nationals, North American, Americas, or World Championships. In the event there are no women helms at the regatta, the trophy is awarded to the woman crew on the top placing boat. The recipient can be from any country.
Sandra Gayle Tartaglino (November 30, 1958 – August 11, 2019)
Born in Boston, Sandra was the daughter of John and Paula (Tracy) Tartaglino of Tiverton, Rhode Island.
She was a world class competitive sailor, well known in the high-performance racing world as one of the few female skippers and served as USF18 Class Treasurer for many years. A true lover of multi-hulls, racing in many classes including Nacra 6.0s, Hobie 16s, Nacra 17s and finally F18s. She actively competed and placed in many major championships worldwide including the Worrell 1000 (a 1,000 mile race from southern Florida to Virginia), North American and World Championships. She was a true competitor who applied her engineering talents to diligently prepare her boat for a race and a special gift for educating many a willing younger crew. She handily won the Buzzards Bay Regatta, her final completed event.
Her competitive spirit and love for sailing developed early while spending many summers with her siblings growing up and sailing off Third Beach in Middletown, RI. Sandra also enjoyed cooking (mostly for others), and organizing many fajita nights for her nieces and nephews. She traveled the globe many times as part of her sailing adventures always sharing her trinkets and swag with her nieces and nephews (usually requiring a well-executed Auntie Sandy scavenger hunt).
Always thinking of others, she would bring brownies to give away during pack up at nearly every event. In 2014, when she couldn’t make it to the F18 North American Championships in Corpus Christie, Texas, she mailed a giant batch of her famous brownies to her fellow sailors and friends. A true testament to how caring of a person she was. And brownies were served at the 2019 F18 North American Championships when the trophy was presented for the first time.
Sandra’s life came to a tragic end doing what she loved most in a collision with a motorboat during the New England 100 regatta on Narragansett Bay near the Claiborne Pell Bridge in Newport, Rhode Island. Sandra had organized this 30th anniversary event and she competed in the first one 30 years ago.
Sandra was a graduate of Taunton High School (1976) and then earned her bachelors and masters degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her professional ambitions aided her in the development of state of the art cardiac catheterization instruments, with leading medical device corporations including Cordis Corp, Boston Scientific and Guidant Corp. She was a pioneer for women in the field of engineering.
