Evening Beer Can Racing’s School of Hard Knox Lesson on Collision
A gorgeous sailing weekend started with a breezy but sunny, warm Friday night race. The Corinthian YC Friday evening races are held on the Knox course area to the West of Angel Island. The Knox buoy is a common feature of the course and often a source of continuing education for adults. Paolo Juvara posted this video of a (thankfully mild) collision as some of the J/105 fleet rounded the Knox buoy.
We are big proponents of signing up for evening beer can racing since it’s a “relaxing” way to get together with friends to spend an evening on the Bay. It’s also a great way to sharpen your sailing skills. However, we know it’s incidents like these that turn people off from racing. Still, the benefit of signing up is that it gets you out sailing more often, and you can avoid situations like these by remembering Rob Moore’s Beer Can Ten Commandments and staying away from tight quarters.
Sometimes staying away from tight quarters is more easily said than done. We proved that again in a rounding at the Easom buoy when Richard Garman and his crew aboard his J/124 Good Call were approaching the buoy on starboard and we tacked onto starboard on their lee bow. That was a poor choice. We should have passed astern and tacked for a smooth rounding. Unfortunately, we misjudged: The current was setting us onto the mark and we had to luff up to try to make it around. When we luffed up, our jib backed and spun us back onto port, right in front of Good Call. Yikes! Luckily for us they’re good sailors and were prepared for our screwup. They tacked away quickly, avoiding a collision by inches. It was another lesson learned. Or should we say “learned again?”
Despite the occasional avoidable drama, summer evening sailing on San Francisco Bay is one of the best reasons to live in the Bay Area. So are midwinters. This past Friday evening on the Bay was its usual stunning self with plenty of breeze to keep us entertained. We were warned that there were three whales on the course, though they thankfully stayed out of the way. Racers should heed the wisdom of the whales.
This coming weekend is the summer solstice and Summer Sailstice weekend. The sun will be out for its longest day, making this week one of the best to spend an evening or more on the Bay. You don’t have to sign up for beer can racing to go sailing in the evening, but those doing so are typically the only boats we see out there. Adding your upcoming solstice weekend sailing plans to the Summer Sailstice map is another way you can commit to using your boat and joining the world sailing as the summer sailing season kicks off.
Sign up for something and sail more!
Judges Keep Busy at Master Mariners Wooden Boat Show
Friend of Latitude John “Woody” Skoriak was kept busy at the Master Mariners Wooden Boat Show on Sunday, inspecting and judging the 30 or so classic wooden boats that lined the docks at Corinthian Yacht Club.
Woody was one of three Bay Area sailors who had the honor of walking the docks, taking photos, chatting with owners and crew, and making check marks on their detailed scoresheets. Together with fellow judges Barry Stompe and Steve Hoffman, Woody was tasked with selecting trophy winners in three categories: Best of Show, Best Owner Maintained, and Best Restoration Effort, and an “Honorable Mention” in each.
“All of us are experienced wooden-boat aficionados, and all either current or former owners of wooden boats. Two of us had also been involved with the Matthew Turner build from the very beginning — so you could say we had a pretty keen eye for the task,” Woody says. He’s known many of the boats and their owners — with the boats sometimes changing hands — since the 1980s.
“Although this wasn’t my first time judging, I have to say — this year was a very tough contest. Several winners were separated by just a few points. What made it even more interesting was that we each worked independently and had no idea how the others were scoring.” Though when the three judges gathered to confer at the end of the day, they discovered that “with very few exceptions” their grades and choices were very similar.
Woody adds, “Whether an owner won a trophy or not, every boat was beautiful — just like the weather that day — and all the owners were friendly, excited, and eager to show their boats, whether it was a 55-ft ketch or an 18-ft rowboat.”
The show winners and awards are as follows:
Hurrica V, Mark Sanders — Stone Cup for “Best in Show”
Bolero, Tim Murison — Corinthian Trophy for “Best Owner Maintained”
Willette, Kenneth Wadsworth — Alma Perpetual Trophy for “Best Preservation Effort”
“Honorable Mention” for each category are Best of Show, Willette (a close call between Hurrica V and Willette); Corinthian Trophy, Black Witch; and Best Preservation Effort, James L. Cronin and Lawton C Hughes.
James L. Cronin and Lawton C Hughes were in “museum condition,” Woody says. “Absolutely exquisite. And they are used daily, year round! Unbelievable. They looked like they were brand new. And most of this work is all done by the members/volunteers.”
Of course no show would be complete without the “People’s Choice” award. This year’s show-going public voted for Liz Diaz’s 1956 Okamoto & Son Sloop Kaze.
Browse the gallery for more photos from this spectacular day. All images by John “Woody” Skoriak.
Save the Date: Napa Valley Marina Nautical Flea Market
What Do Alameda Sailors Do When They Retire?
Alameda sailors Rebecca Rivkyn and Tim Kelliher retired last fall. Rather than sit on the dock waiting for inspiration, they hopped over to the East Coast and bought a boat. Marlove, a Lagoon 450 F, was awaiting them in Fort Pierce, FL.
“We bought it and moved aboard in February of this year,” Tim wrote us. “We sold or gave away everything except what we moved aboard with.” That’s the kind of sailing spirit we support and love hearing about.
The couple spent 10 days driving across the country with their dog, Dobby. They then took the next five months to prepare the boat, and probably themselves, to sail north to Connecticut for the summer, with a plan to return to Florida in the fall.
And, Tim added, “In the spring we will head across the Atlantic toward the Mediterranean. From there, who knows?”
This is what we’ve been talking about all these years (erm, decades): sailors hopping aboard a boat and going where the wind blows. Congratulations on your retirement, Rebecca and Tim, and fair winds for an epic voyaging future.
Shoreline Lake Hosts Free Sails for Summer Sailstice
On Saturday, June 21, Shoreline Lake will offer free skippered sailboat rides from 10 a.m.–2 p.m. The day’s activities are in celebration of Summer Sailstice, the annual family-friendly, global celebration of summer and sailing. Here on the Bay, sailors, sailing clubs and organizations are signed up for the Sailstice celebrations and will bring more people into the world of wind-powered joy, tranquility and exhilaration.
Shoreline Lake is currently the only South Bay location taking part in the Sailstice. “Shoreline Lake has been a strong supporter of the Sailstice goals of introducing newcomers to, and dispelling common myths about, this fun and exciting Olympic sport,” the group’s press release says. “A public event hosted by the Boathouse, the sailboat rides are meant as an opportunity for ‘newbies’ to take part in the fun of getting out on the water, and show just how accessible sailing is for both adults and kids. Skippered by the Boathouse’s experienced sailing staff, rides will be 20 minutes each. Besides this taste of lake sailing, Shoreline Lake will also have its usual active sailing scene (classes, and more) going on at full blast, as well as other family-friendly activities taking place.”
Date: June 21
Time: 10 a.m.–2 p.m.
Where: 3160 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View, CA 94043
*Please note that space is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Minimum age to participate is 2 years old.
Oceangoing Volunteers Wanted to Help Cleanup Projects
The Ocean Cleanup is calling on sailors out in the Pacific, anywhere between California and Hawaii this summer, to take part in its research expedition to help map an estimated 100,000 tons of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). The organization hopes to enlist the efforts of sailors who are willing to attach an AI camera called an Automatic Debris Imaging System (ADIS) to their vessel. All that’s required is for volunteers to install the camera at the highest possible point, making sure it faces the ocean surface, and ADIS will do the rest.
The lightweight ADIS cameras will take photos of plastics afloat at sea and send the data back to The Ocean Cleanup HQ in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. This will enable the organization to map plastic hot-spot concentrations and use predictive software to track their movement using ocean circulation and wave and wind data, with the aim of creating more efficient cleanup procedures. Sailors willing to fit the AI cameras and use GPS trackers on their leisure trips or during regattas can advance understanding of the patch’s composition to help future cleanup efforts.
Other ways that the boats can help to advance understanding of this remote stretch of ocean is by using GPS tracking buoys to tag lost, or abandoned, fishing gear and ghost nets. This will also help track and model where these large items are floating and pinpoint them for targeted, future cleanup efforts. As ghost-net hunters, participants will be asked to attach the trackers to abandoned fishing gear found at sea and release them.
Laurent Lebreton, head of research at The Ocean Cleanup, said: “The GPGP is an ever-moving plastic soup that is impeding the ocean’s ability to help regulate the climate and is harmful to marine life.
“Technology has a big part to play in the future ocean cleanup. The strategic integration of remote sensing from ships, drones, and satellites, as well as the use of AI and particularly machine learning, can revolutionize the detection, tracking, and removal of plastic debris.
“To help us better target our extraction operations and clean up the patch more effectively and economically, we need to understand where the high concentrations of plastic are located. The sailing community can become citizen scientists and boost our efforts to solve this environmental crisis by signing up and being part of the solution.”
Interested parties can join the expedition here: The Ocean Cleanup Research Expedition.
The Ocean Cleanup has removed more than one million pounds of trash from the GPGP over the past four years. Estimated to contain around 100,000 tons of plastic, the GPGP covers an area twice the size of Texas and mostly comprises ghost nets and other fishing gear, complemented by a wide array of plastic pieces dating back to the 1960s.
Summer Music Series Kicks Off Friday at Marin Yacht Club
