Adventures in the Duxship

The San Francisco Bay Area’s OYRA held their Duxship Race, with a start and a finish at St. Francis Yacht Club and a 32-mile ocean course, on July 25. Pat Broderick, sailing on the Wyliecat 30 Nancy, described the race as nearly picture perfect. "The race started out with a nice westerly wind coupled with a light ebb to flush the boats out beyond Point Bonita," he said. Busy shipping traffic added an extra level of challenge.

Sailors in the 28-boat fleet enjoyed spotting baby harbor porpoises inside the Gate and common murres, trailed by their adorable singleton offspring, bobbing on the gentle ocean swells.

Those sticking close to shore cut across the bouncy chop of the Potatopatch Shoal and sailed up the Bonita Channel, dodging the fishing fleet into Bolinas Bay before tacking over to the Duxbury Reef buoy. On the way, they got a scenic tour of Southern Marin beaches (Rodeo and Muir were fogged in but Stinson and Bolinas were sunny.)

A reach to the Lightship (aka Approach buoy "SF") followed. This leg favored those with asymmetrical spinnakers — the mellow breeze was too far forward for many of the symmetrical kites. After the jibe at the Lightship, the remaining spinnakers blossomed. Occasional northwesterly puffs kept trimmers alert. Past Point Bonita, the wind gradually built.

Common wisdom states that if you can spot windsurfers and kiteboarders as you approach the Bay, there’s big breeze ahead. Why must we always jibe right at the Golden Gate Bridge, the narrowest point of the Gate — and the windiest? Singlehander Max Crittenden’s final approach and jibes with his Martin 32 Iniscaw definitely didn’t go as planned. "Sometimes things don’t go as well as we’d like," he observed. After a blown jibe, his spinnaker took a flyer right on the Cityfront, where onlookers could observe his struggles, and exclaim, "Oh no, look at Iniscaw! Poor Max."

©2015 Max Crittenden

Things went from bad to worse when Crittenden arrived at his home harbor, South Beach. "There was a jib sheet caught in the prop, because I forgot to check for lines in the water, and the line went over the side in all the hoo-hah at the Gate." With the motor disabled by the wrapped prop, Crittenden attempted to sail into his slip (they’re all crosswind slips). "I got headed, tried to turn around, the boat accelerated, and I chose to hit a piling instead of another boat. That’s how I smashed the bow. I decided to sail to an end tie; it’s a beam reach so I rigged a spring line to stop the boat. It worked but the spring took out the stanchion."

The next opportunity for adventure in the OYRA series will be the two-day Drake’s Bay Race on August 22-23. For the second year in a row, the Singlehanded Sailing Society will join the race.