Kai Cup 2025

In September 2024, we tragically lost our crew member Kai Hoenig to suicide after a long battle with depression. They had come out to us as Transgender earlier that summer and were looking forward to starting a new chapter of their life in college. Kai was a key member of our crew, having sailed on the Screaming O longer than anyone, even our current owners! They are one of the reasons our sailing program is so sucsessful today as they knew the boat inside and out. On a personal level, Kai was one of my first climb team students when I was in college. Their maturity and wit made them such a wonderful presence on the team and years later we reconneted through sailing and switched roles, the teacher became the student and vice versa. I owe so much of my sailing knowledge to Kai. 

We knew we wanted to honor Kai's life with a memorial sailing regatta but wanted it to be more than that. So, Kai Cup was born with the goal of remember our friend and influencial community member while raising money for Trans Northland, an organization supporitng Transgender individuals in northern Minnesota. We kicked off the event weekend with a social gathering at Earth Rider brewery with live music from Sophie Hiroko and a raffle with items donated by local companies, individuals, and larger brands like Smith Optics and UK Sail Makers. The following morning everyone got ready to sail. Canal park was socked in with thick fog forcing the race commity to postpone the race and hour, and then another hour. Then the fog lifted enough to head out onto the ever changing Lake Superior and race boats! The race commity boat was lead by Kai's dad, John (better known as JHo) and started with a blank start in honor of Kai. And the boats were off! And the fog came right back in. 

Myself, Christian Fraser, Marika Negrelli, and Nicky Kumero made up the planning commity for Kai Cup and are all members of the Screaming O crew. Our plan from the beginning, as highly competitive individuals, was to make the fundraising portion of Kai Cup something extraordinary and fun. With that the PHRF buy-up fundraising plan was created! Each boat that races has a PHRF rating, think of it like a golf handicap. Depending on your rating you either owe another boat time per mile or they owe you time per mile. For $25 you can buy up your boat's PHRF rating by 3 seconds per mile. And there is no limit to how much you can buy up. 

When planning first began for Kai Cup our goal was to have at least 8 boats register and to raise $5,000. Wow, did we surpass our goals. We had 41 boats register, not all of them raced as some were located in Minneapolis, Bayfield, and even Canada. Our community came together and rasied $25,000 for Trans Northland which we later learned was about a third of their budget last year. Blown away is an understatement. I am so proud to be part of the sailing community in Duluth and even luckier to have called Kai my student, crewmate, and family. 

Photos by Jenny Arndt and Dave Drache

Design Notes:
I wanted the logo for Kai Cup to be simple and timeless but have some character. We found out Kai's favorite color was teal and wanted to make sure that was encorporated into the branding for the event. I pulled inspiration from old sailing shirts and posters in the way of simplicity for the boat graphic but pulled in modern inspiration for the font (Blackcurrent) and the arched background shape.