2026 Delta Ditch Run was the perfect day for the 28 strong Moore 24 fleet. Light to moderate running with a few blastreaches just to keep the blood flowing. Melinda was not able tomake it but Andrew Hamilton signed on for this year’s Flying Circus adventure. We didn’t start off strong but we did end up with a good view of the fleet off the line!
For the first big call, we rounded the Brothers to port – and we stayed low after the islands to hedge against the boats that went around the other way around the Brothers.
Like last year Rowan and Vikki sailed fast and the shortest distance, and they reached the Carquinez Bridge well ahead. The boats that stayed low against the San Pablo Bay channel came out strong mixing in with the leaders on the right.
We played the middle and ended up just in the top 10 (maybe) at the Vallejo bridge. There was good tight racing to Benicia, we passed a few boats and got passed by a few. Our big break came at the approach to the Benicia bridge when we took the big puffs down and put ourselves closer to the Martinez shore than the other boats. By doing that, we avoided the lee of the large ship and managed to get a bit more flood in the deep water of the channel. That move put us into the top 5 boats entering Suisun Bay.
As the breeze increased, we played the right side of Suisun Bay and worked our way to the top three and managed to exit the Bay just ahead of 33 and 75. 33 passed us on the run towards the Antioch Bridge. On the long reach approaching the Antioch Bridge we sailed low against the lee shore and had a little better breeze and managed to get past 33 again. We stretched a little on the reach to Mark 19 then put up a big jib which hurt us relativeto 33 on the first half of the long reach past the barges. But as the breeze got lighter after the barges, we gained back what we lost on the windy part.
We held the lead until we entered the last long run to the finishwhen 33 started to come on strong. The race became a battle of traffic management. We struggled to get around several boats on the last 5 miles but each one we managed to get past 33 also had to deal with. At one stage we were overlapped on opposite sides of the channel but we had just managed to get past an Express 27 that they ended up having to fight for a while so we were able to sneak ahead to cross the line in front by seconds.
MVP- kelp stick!
Great day with amazing racing. Already looking forward to next year.
Bill Erkelens
