Weekend Sightings
Saturday Sightings
The weekend of December 8-9 was a chilly one on San Francisco Bay, but a northeasterly provided some fine sailing in the East Bay for racers, daysailors and junior students alike. Saturday was the sunny day, and the forecast for 8-10 knots out of the NNE was spot-on.
Sunday Summary
Sunday clouded up and the temps felt colder, but the forecasters who predicted no breeze were incorrect. Instead, the wind speed and direction repeated the previous day’s. Berkeley Yacht Club hosted Midwinter races on both days. Though breeze took a bit longer to fill on Sunday, the race committee made do with a mere 15-minute postponement to set the marks and get the divisions started.
Caption Contest(!)
Here’s your December Caption Contest(!).
This is another image that has floated around the Internet, making it difficult to credit. If you know the source, please let us know!
You can enter your entry below, or email us here. Good luck!
Ad: Scrubbis from Davis Instruments
SFYC’s Jim Cunningham Second in Etchells
If you’re looking to challenge yourself in the Etchells class there’s no better place to be this winter than the four-race Biscayne Bay Series in Florida. San Francisco Yacht Club’s Jim Cunningham traveled east for the first regatta of the series this weekend, and, with crew Steve Hunt, Mark Ivey and Serena Vilage, his Lifted took second place behind 2017 world champion Steve Benjamin.
Forty-eight teams sailed in the Louis Piana Cup Regatta in pleasant Biscayne Bay sailing conditions. The series will continue with three more events: the Sidney Doren Memorial Regatta January 5-6, the Florida State Championship February 9-10, and the Midwinters East Regatta March 1-3. Check the complete results here.
Lost in the Fog
A while back, the KQED podcast Bay Curious did a fun investigation of the Bay Area’s foghorns. They asked several questions, including: Why use fog horns in our modern GPS-and-radar era, who or what activates the horns, etc?
There are some 11 foghorns in the Bay operated by the Coast Guard, and about 20 more operated by other non-federal entities, according to the podcast.
Well, the podcast (which we highly recommend) got us a little curious, too.
Have foghorns ever gotten you out of a jam? Have you been radar-less — either by design or the loss of your electronics — and used a horn to ‘feel’ your way across the water? Do you have less high-tech indicators near where you sail, such as a bell on a buoy?
And as long as we’re asking, do you know the proper sound-signals protocol in restricted visibility?
And, best of all, do you have a good (or even harrowing) story about being unexpectedly socked in? We’d like to know — you can comment on the story below, or email us here. Please be sure to include your boat name, make and port of call, or just tell us where you’re from.