No Sailing on Mother’s Day — Does That Still Make Sense?
Make no mistake about it: We loved our mother and think all mothers need to be celebrated on Mother’s Day. However, the world has changed, and we thought we’d check in on a Mother’s Day tradition to see if it still makes sense. Celebrating Mother’s Day, as such, still makes sense, but the day has always stood out in the YRA annual racing calendar because there are never any events scheduled for Mother’s Day. Is that too hot to touch? Should we carry on with that tradition without taking a periodic pregnant pause to give it some thought? We’re nervously reaching out to readers (and mostly sailing mothers) to see how they feel about having no sailing events scheduled on their special day.
One really lucky aspect of not having events on the sailing calendar was looking at what was coming up for this weekend’s sailing — Mother’s Day sure stood out. We assume that’s saved a few other sailors besides us. That little gem might easily get missed if it was surrounded by a bunch of races.
Given all the racing on the annual calendar, it is nice to take a break now and again, but is Mother’s Day the day? Since our February 1979 Women’s Issue, which celebrated many of the pioneering sailing women of the time, the world of sailing women has expanded dramatically, so there may be more than a few women wondering why they’re at a Mother’s Day brunch rather than out sailing.
Our mother had never sailed until she met Dad, but there was lots of sailing after that. Their honeymoon was a bareboat charter around Cape Cod in the early ’50s before they started a family and sailing became a family activity.
Maybe the Mother of All Mother’s Days hasn’t been invented yet, but ideas like this take a while to gestate before such an idea can be carried to term. Maybe the “no-sailing-events” is a tradition that will carry far into the future, but we thought it was a good time to check in and see if moms would rather be sailing on their special day.
The weather forecast for Sunday looks good, so it should be a pretty nice day for a … Mother’s Day. Regardless of how you decide to celebrate, we salute all mothers on Mother’s Day.
Latitude 38’s May Caption Contest(!) — Ready, Set, Go!
“I’m open!” Is this the latest craze in water sports? Let us know what you think in this month’s Caption Contest(!).
You’ll find last month’s winner and top 10 in Loose Lips on page 35 of Latitude 38‘s May issue.
Visit Naos Yachts for Full Sales and Service
Eighty-One Boats Sail the 2026 Great Vallejo Race
The 2026 Great Vallejo Race was hosted by Vallejo Yacht Club (VYC) on the weekend of May 2–3. In what is billed by the hosts as the official start of San Francisco Bay’s summer racing season, 81 boats competed across 19 divisions in a mix of PHRF and one-design racing. Saturday saw boats race from the Berkeley Circle up to Vallejo, with Sunday’s race a return run to San Francisco Bay.
The race schedule was made up of eight PHRF spinnaker divisions, two “sporty” divisions, a non-spinnaker PHRF division, a multihull division, a cruising division and a doublehanded division. Five one-design classes raced: Express 37, J/105, Express 27, Islander 36 and Alerion 28.
“Fun and fast race to Vallejo this year,” Katie Cornetta, tactician aboard the winning Express 37 Golden Moon (StFYC) tells Latitude. “More reaching on starboard tack than expected in San Pablo Bay caused many boats with big asymmetrical kites to wipe out and have to drop and reset multiple times. We were just able to carry the spinnaker all the way through San Pablo Bay and up the channel to the finish. Kudos to the crew that hiked really hard on the reach, which made a big difference in our speed!
“The race home was a gorgeous beat to windward for most of the way in champagne conditions,” Cornetta continues. “Being against the [current] slowed us a bit but kept the water nice and flat! Couldn’t have asked for a better weekend of sailing.”
The biggest PHRF class was the Spinnaker Three division with seven boats. That class was won by Bob Walden and Lori Tewskbury’s J/100 Wowla (RYC), finishing second in the race to VYC, and winning the race back to the Bay. Peter Cameron’s J/70 Kangaroo Jockey (StFYC) won the race to Vallejo and was third on Sunday, placing second in the division.
The biggest one-design fleet (and biggest fleet overall) was the eight-boat Express 27 class. David Wick’s cleverly named Hot Sheet (RYC) won the race to Vallejo, and finished second on the way back to claim the event win. After finishing fourth on Saturday, Marc Belloli’s Magic Bus (StFYC) won the return race on Sunday to claim second place. Rounding out the Express 27 podium was the Tahoe snowbird boat New Wave (SLTWYC) sailed by Eric Villadsen and Ashley Farr.
Eleven of the 19 divisions saw the same boat win both legs of the race. Although in a few of those divisions only one boat was racing.
In the world of handicapped racing, Rufus Sjoberg’s J/125 Rufless (RYC) won both races in the four-boat Spinnaker One division. Nesrin Basoz’s J/111 Swift Ness (RYC) won both legs of the six-boat Spinnaker Two division. Rodney Pimentel’s Cal 40 Azure (EYC) did the same in Spinnaker Five. Lickety Split (TYC), Rick Raduziner’s Santa Cruz 27, won both races in the six-boat Spinnaker Seven division. David Schumann and his Seacart 30 Bottle Rocket (SFYC) won both legs of the multihull division.
Of the one-design fleets, Michael Quinn’s Resilience (RYC) won both Alerion 28 races. Richard Schoenhair’s Windwalker (BYC) did the same in the four-boat Islander 36 class. Michael Laport’s Golden Moon (StFYC) emulated that performance in the Express 37 fleet, which comprised four boats.
With the Great Vallejo Race in the rearview mirror, racers now look ahead to summer kicking into high gear. Wind speeds in the Bay will increase, Karl the Fog will make himself known, and San Francisco Bay’s racers will duke it out all over the Bay.
You can find the full scores of the 2026 Great Vallejo Race here.
We’ll have a full report on the GVR in June’s Racing Sheet. In the meantime you can read more about racing in the May issue.
Lauren Wilson Vies for L.A. 2028, After Two Decades Away From Elite Sailing
As we sail into the Mother’s Day weekend (yes, they deserve a whole weekend, and more!) and reflect on the lack of sailing events on the calendar for Sunday — see today’s ‘LL “No Sailing on Mother’s Day,” we thought it a great time to share a sailing-mom story. Lauren Wilson is training for the 2028 L.A. Olympics while raising two children, and a husband (sorry fellas, but we all know how this goes 😄). Story below.
In most sports, athletes reach their peak in their late 20s and mid-30s, and it’s all downhill from there. That’s not the case for US Sailing Olympic hopeful Lauren Wilson, a 41-year-old mother of two who is training for the 2028 L.A. Olympic Games in the ILCA 6 class.
Wilson’s parents met when they were high school sailors — the sport is in her blood. She grew up sailing on her family’s 40-footer, and started at sailing camps when she was 6 years old. While she was dubious at first, her first summer had her hooked. After she graduated from Sabots in Southern California, the ILCA 6 came around at the perfect time. Having raced the ILCA 6 (formerly Laser Radials) throughout high school, the highlight of her career to that point was a second- place finish at the US Nationals.
By the early 2000s, Wilson was one of America’s top ILCA 6 sailors and a top contender to represent the US in the Olympics’ European Dinghy class. With the ILCA 6 not yet an Olympic class, US Sailing encouraged the teenager to switch to the European Dinghy class and make a run at the Olympics. Prior to starting her four years at USC, Wilson was with the US Sailing Team in Athens, Greece, ahead of the 2004 Olympics. While there, she realized her late teens might not be the right time for her Olympic campaign. At a team dinner, Wilson and fellow USC sailor Mikey Anderson were discussing their return to school, two weeks into the term. “We were in Athens and we were going to miss the drop period and couldn’t buy our books. And the guys at the table were like, man, I haven’t bought books since 1984.” Wilson and Mikey looked at each other, realizing that was the year they were born. Their fellow Olympic hopefuls were “old.” But for Wilson it was also an “aha” moment. “It’s not gymnastics; your career isn’t over. In fact, there’s an element of smarts and experience that really lends to success in sport and in life. It didn’t have to be right now,” she continues.
San Francisco on the Bay: “The List”
Dine, Drink, Smoke, Stay, Play and Shop. Discover San Francisco Bay and all that inspires those of us who live or visit here.