Great Vallejo Race to the Party
Saturday’s Race and Party at Vallejo Yacht Club
While many of our readers were spectating at SailGP in San Francisco or browsing boats and gear at the Pacific Sail & Power Boat Show in Redwood City, others were racing to Vallejo and back, preferring athletic action to passive participation. The crews this year didn’t have to go to athletic extremes. They arrived in Vallejo on Saturday and Richmond on Sunday largely unscathed. What they did experience was a very quick ride to host Vallejo Yacht Club in a flood current, following seas, and breeze into the mid-teens.
Sunday’s Race to Richmond
Sunday’s race to the finish at Richmond YC was a longer day. Lighter wind made for slow going against that same current. The breeze did pick up for the second half of the race, but again not reaching gear-busting or body-bruising punishment levels.
Although this was a remarkably successful regatta, it was also remarkable (not in a good way) for the numbers. Signups fell below 100 entries for the first time in living memory with the exception of the COVID years 2020 and 2021. (For example, the earliest stats from Jibeset show 241 registrations in 2013. Old-timers tell us the regatta used to get 500+ entries.) If you’ve sailed the Great Vallejo Race in the past but didn’t this year, we wonder why not. Was it the conflict with SailGP and/or the Pacific Sail & Power Boat Show? Was it the weather forecast? The entry fee? Crew, transportation or boat-gear hassles? Please comment below. Include your name, town and your boat’s name and type if any — and please keep it friendly!
We’ll have much more in the June issue of Latitude 38. In the meantime, you can check the preliminary results on Jibeset. You can also go to Jibeset to replay race tracks recorded by some of the entries.
Sad to hear that participation has fallen off. It was a Not-Miss race in the day. Or a NOT-MISS party… VYC was/is always a gracious host. The hungover beat back was always brutal. I was at the SailGP event for the weekend which was a blast. Bummed that the boat show was going on at the same time too.
-Above said, the Natural Blonde stays close to home and only does Beer Cans these days and we wouldn’t have participated. Might still have scares from past Vallejo races though.
Quite frankly, I dont think the lower number of entries is such a bad thing! Ive done the race many times and the raft ups were kinda nuts and the lines for the bar, the tight quarters in the club, even lines for food or the head were a put off. Maybe put a limit on number of entries and see if my explanation might explain the fall off (maybe others feel as i do).
Having done the race several times on other peoples boats and twice on my Hobie back when nobody did that, I wonder if the race is “aging out”? It has been going for a long time. Remember when they ran huge generators on the submarines 24 hours a day?
First time doing Great Vallejo race, and I loved it. In SoCal, Yachting Cup was also last weekend and had low turnout (as did Ensenada Race the weekend before). Turnout seems to be generally declining everywhere but not for all races. There seem to be more races than ever, which impacts turnout and quality particularly when they are run on the same days. When that happens, it’s not good for our sport.
We had a conflicting race here in Inverness, one of our two distance races. We lost a few sailors to the Vallejo Race, and I am sure they lost some to our event up here. Just a wonderfully busy weekend !
In their Friday Roundup newsletter, the YRA posed a similar question in a longer-form survey. If you didn’t compete in this year’s Great Vallejo Race, you can take the survey here: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/sv/yDRIz73/NOGVR2023