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King Tide Storm Damages Inverness Yacht Club Pier
It’s just a pier, right? Though to sailors and members of a yacht club, a simple pier is so much more. The pier has launched a thousand dreams in kids who’ve learned to sail, hosted endless racers, and 20 years ago set this month’s Good Jibes podcast guest on a course toward buying a catamaran for $2. The Saturday storm, combined with the king tide, did damage to coastal facilities all over Northern California. The Inverness Yacht Club, on the shores of Tomales Bay, is one of those that suffered damage.
Skip Allan wrote on the Singlehanded Sailing Society bulletin board, “The tide was scheduled to be one of the highest of the year at plus 6.6 feet. What was not scheduled was a low-pressure vortex with gale-force winds coinciding with the high tide. The northwest gale blew down the length of Tomales Bay, also oriented northwest/southeast, pushing a lot of water along with the flooding tide. The low barometric pressure also allowed the tide to rise even more. The result was a high tide of plus 8.1 feet, rather than 6.6, that flooded the lower floor and boat yard knee deep.
“The below photo taken about 9:15 a.m. Saturday shows IYC’s pier as it is being torn adrift. Adrift to windward are the remains of the neighbor’s pier, which was completely destroyed.”
“Running perpendicular to this high tide and current was the Inverness Yacht Club pier, 250 feet long, with its two small-boat hoists. It was not even close. All this extra water picked up the pier deck for its entire length and floated it off its pilings. The pier deck now lies floating nearby like an undulating sea serpent while a fully committed work crew is attempting to reposition the pier back on its pilings. Unlikely they will be successful without a barge and crane. But don’t underestimate the sheer determination of IYC members.”
It’s a huge challenge for all clubs to keep the infrastructure intact so sailors and sailing programs can stay active. The Inverness Yacht Club is home to a terrific junior program, a very active 110 fleet, and winner of the 2018 Lipton Cup, and is where Terry Castleman, guest on this week’s episode of Good Jibes, learned to sail.
It won’t be easy, but we hope the club can get it all back in place for summer sailing.
Eight Bells — West Coast Circumnavigator John Guzzwell
West Coast sailor and circumnavigator John Guzzwell passed away in August at his home in Seattle. He was 94. At the age of 29, Guzzwell completed a four-year circumnavigation aboard the 21-ft yawl Trekka. At the time, Trekka was the smallest boat to have sailed around the world. His story is immortalized in his book Trekka Round the World, which became a cult classic among would-be voyagers, and is credited for sparking the dreams of many who have circumnavigated since.
Trekka was designed by J. Laurent Giles of Lymington, England. Guzzwell built the boat himself with the intention of singlehanding around the globe. Despite many sailors saying the boat’s small stature and lack of weight made her unseaworthy, Guzzwell set off from his home port in Victoria, B.C., Canada, in 1955. George Day of Cruising Compass writes, “The boat was way ahead of its time, with a light, shallow hull, reverse sheer and an early cruising fin keel and semi-spade rudder.”
Along the way, Guzzwell tied up in New Zealand and spent 16 months sailing with Miles and Beryl Smeeton on their ill-fated Cape Horn attempt aboard the 46-ft Bermuda ketch Tzu Hang in 1957. When the boat pitchpoled and dismasted in a storm, Guzzwell’s carpentry skills enabled the three sailors to reach Chile after 87 days at sea. This story is chronicled in another sailors’ classic, Once Is Enough.
Latitude editor Andy Turpin wrote about Guzzwell in the lead-up to the 2009 Strictly Sail Pacific Boat Show, where Guzzwell was to join the Authors’ Corner and share insights and video footage from his lifetime of voyaging and custom boatbuilding.
Andy writes, “Born and raised on Britain’s Channel Islands, John grew up around boats, the son of a sea captain. But the tranquility of his childhood was shattered when WWII broke out, as the family was soon interned in a Nazi POW camp. Afterwards, he was trained as a shipwright and eventually emigrated to British Columbia, where, at age 22, he began building Trekka in his spare time to a J. Laurent Giles design. Her light-displacement hull was many years ahead of its time.
“John later became a pioneer in cold-molded construction, a method he still advocates at annual workshops at Port Townsend. During his distinguished career as a custom boatbuilder, he has lent his expertise to a diversity of projects ranging from the 65-ft Farr-designed Lively to the 158-ft topsail schooner Tole Mour.
“Between projects, John cruised extensively with his family, and in 1994 did the Pan Pacific Yacht Race from L.A. to Osaka, returning via the Aleutians and mainland Alaska. In both 1998 and 2002 (then 71) he raced to Hawaii in the Singlehanded Transpac aboard a cold-molded 30-footer called Endangered Species, a half-sized Open 60 that he designed and built himself.”
We join the sailing community in mourning the legendary sailor John Guzzwell (1930-2024).
You can learn more about John Guzzwell and Trekka at The Maritime Museum of British Columbia. See Guzzwell and other West Coast Circumnavigators here.
Dream Yacht — More Destinations, More Choice
When it comes to choosing your yacht, an ownership program, and where you’d like to sail, Dream Yacht offers more choice than anyone else. With seven world class brands and 60 models in our portfolio, Dream Yacht offers the widest range of yachts for sale in the market, including Bali, Dufour, Lagoon, Excess, Fountaine Pajot, Beneteau and Jeanneau.
Dream Yacht’s 35+ base locations enable you to explore the world in a way few people ever will. From the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean and from the Mediterranean to Australia, no other company will let you set sail in such a kaleidoscope of landscapes, colors, and cultures. The question is, which yacht and sailing grounds will you choose? Visit Dream Yacht Sales & Ownership for more details.
This Weekend’s Winter Solstice Starts Countdown to Summer
Saturday will mark the shortest daylight hours of the year. It’s when the sun touches the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere and starts its march north to the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere. It also means there are just six months until the 25th annual Summer Sailstice global celebration of sailing. Though you may not yet have any sailing plans for the weekend of June 21, 2025, we’re highlighting the events that local clubs and the YRA already have in the 2025 YRA Sailing Calendar, which we just sent to press.
It’s not as if nobody plans ahead! Here are the events already on the calendar for Summer Sailstice:
Saturday/Sunday events:
Sat/Sun: SFYC Hart Nunes Regatta — Knox/Central Bay
Sat/Sun: RYC BAYS #1 — Southampton
Sat/Sun: SBYC J/105/J/88 Stop — South Bay, S.F. Side
Saturday only events:
Sat: Encinal YC Alameda One-Design Regatta — Alameda
Sat: Half Moon Bay YC Rear Commodore Regatta — Half Moon Bay
Sat: SFYC Hank Easom Regatta — Knox/Central Bay
Sat: Stockton Sailing Club Single Handed Race — Stockton/Delta
Sat: SSS Single Handed Transpac — Ocean
Sat: YRA In The Bay Series #2 — City/Central Bay
Sunday Only Events:
Sun: InvernessYC Bender 7-8 — Tomales Bay
Sun: Presidio YC Baxter-Judson Race 3 — Horseshoe Cove
Sun: Sausalito YC Rear Commodore Pursuit Race — Knox
Sun: YRA Doublehanded Sunday #3 — Cityfront
In addition, you could start your weekend with Friday night races at the Berkeley Yacht Club, Corinthian Yacht Club, Island Yacht Club or South Beach Yacht Club.
Other options? It’s a great weekend to sail up to Petaluma for a weekend cruise or the Delta for a summer getaway.
This weekend’s winter solstice is your midwinter reminder that the days are going to get longer and it’s not too early to join others who have already put Summer Sailstice sailing plans on the Summer Sailstice site. You can add your plans (intentions) here.
Latitude 38’s 2025 YRA Sailing Calendar will be distributed with the January issue on December 30.
SV ‘Dogfish’ — the Next Chapter, Part Two
Last month, Marga Pretorius from Oakland, aboard the Kelly-Peterson 44 Dogfish, caught readers up on what she had been up to since her last Changes in Latitudes story in 2022. A series of circumstances — most notably a fledgling career as a marine surveyor that had her traveling far and wide — ended up taking her away from the boat she had been cruising solo for the previous five years. She also returned to Colorado, where her family lived, eventually restoring an old cabin to rent out to supplement the cruising kitty. Then she took off for Europe to visit her sister and do a little exploring by bicycle. “In my pedaling, I had a lot of time to think about life and what was next,” she wrote. “I was ready to return to my beloved Dogfish.”
I returned from my European cycling vacation happy and healthy in body and mind. One thing my time away had cleared up was this: The point of the survey business to begin with had been to find a way to financially support my cruising dreams — not to become a workaholic and forget my original vision.
And I realized my time away from Dogfish had changed me. Even though I had not been sailing my own boat, I had been privileged to drop into cruising destinations around the world, and being physically in those places had made them real to me. Like maybe I could take Dogfish there. The world and its possibilities felt open to me as never before. So one last road trip. I loaded all my tools from my shed in Colorado into my car and drove them over the Rocky Mountains back to Mexico and to the dusty and buzzing Cabrales Boatyard. And there she was, waiting for me. My boat. Peering down her companionway, I found Dogfish pretty well as I’d left her, but with a thin coating of soft Peñasco sand on every surface, like powdered sugar on a crème de Paris.
I chiseled away at the sizable list of projects, aiming to make her ready for whatever adventures lay ahead. It was back to building mode for me, but instead of demolishing mountain cabin walls, I cut carefully into a main bulkhead.
See “SV ‘Dogfish’ — the Next Chapter, Part One” in the November issue of Latitude 38.
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