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.