Celebrating Martin Luther King Day on the Bay
On Martin Luther King Day we want to pay tribute to all those who are making a difference by reaching out to communities that are not part of the traditional sailing demographic. We can’t possibly name all the organizations or all the volunteers who have worked for decades to invite underserved communities, and those who would not normally have access, to have a chance to sail the Bay.
These organizations are everywhere around the Bay and include folks like Rocking the Boat, now operating out of the new park at India Basin in San Francisco and getting members of the San Francisco/Hunters Point community out onto the Bay. Marie Rogers continues her work in Southern California and on the board of US Sailing to bring sailing to Black and woman sailors. Programs at Sailing Education Adventures (SEA) in San Rafael, the Bluewater Foundation in San Francisco, Treasure Island Sailing Center, Sea Scouts and Pegasus Sailing in Berkeley are making sailing accessible to more people all around the Bay. We attempt to keep up with all the good people doing good things for others on our Heeling Power of Sailing page.
A quote from Martin Luther King Jr.’s essay “A Testament to Hope” says, “The past is strewn with the ruins of the empires of tyranny, and each is a monument not merely to man’s blunders but to his capacity to overcome them. While it is a bitter fact that in America in 1968, I am denied equality solely because I am black, yet I am not a chattel slave. Millions of people have fought thousands of battles to enlarge my freedom; restricted as it still is, progress has been made.” All these organizations know they are contributing and making progress, but like Martin Luther King Jr., they know there’s still a long way to go.
Spring is on the horizon, and sailors who have slowed down their activity for the winter (not everyone does!) will have an opportunity to share the Bay with more sailors as the season picks up. Idle boats are there to give friends old and new a chance to sail the Bay. Any of the organizations on our Heeling Power of Sailing page would welcome volunteers and contributions to support their efforts to bring sailing to more people of color around the Bay.
Many boats struggle to sail for lack of crew, and many people struggle to get onto the Bay or the ocean because they don’t have a boat. This is an obvious mismatch that endless volunteers are trying to resolve. Latitude 38 hopes, in some small way, our Crew List and Crew List party (next one coming to Golden Gate Yacht Club on March 5) can also help connect more people to sailing.
If you’re lucky enough to have Martin Luther King day off, we hope you get to sail the Bay today — it’s beautiful out there. We also want to give thanks to all the people working to make a difference. The hope expressed by Martin Luther King Jr. survived because, despite setbacks and challenges, he kept his attention on action toward progress. We thank all those striving to overcome obstacles to continue the mission.
Slippery Start to 2026 With Del Rey YC’s Malibu Race
Like the Rose Parade, Del Rey Yacht Club’s (DRYC) annual Malibu and Return Race rarely gets rained on. Typically, it’s sunny with light breeze and flat seas to kick off each new year.
Not this year. With a wet front approaching, 51 boats crossed the starting line with their spinnakers as 12-knot winds from the southeast made for fast headway to their next marks. Course distances for individual classes ranged between 13.5 and 22.5 miles.
With nine boats rated below 0 in PHRF, the Class A start was especially exciting, with jockeying and spinnaker sets by a variety of boats including the iconic Spencer 62 Ragtime, the Davidson 52 Pendragon, and the R/P 63 Good Energy.
Within an hour following the start, rain arrived, but the wind increased. Many boats reported steady double-digit boat speeds on their “windward” legs toward Malibu Pier and other marks set off Topanga Beach and Big Rock. (Sadly, hundreds of beachside structures present during last year’s Malibu Race had burned down in the Palisades Fire, including homes owned by some of the racers.)
The rain and low clouds made for challenging mark roundings and sail changes. Some crews were rusty: Two upside-down spinnakers were set during their starts, and a few sheets fell under a few boats’ hulls. With low visibility and raindrops obscuring compasses and chartplotters, steering straight courses was especially difficult for racers and mark-set boats alike.
Despite the wet conditions, participants enjoyed a fast race, with tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches provided that evening by DRYC.
Class winners were Phil Friedman’s Farr 85 Sapphire Knight, Brack Duker’s J/111 Revo, Jack Meyer’s J/111 Zephyr, Russ Wasden’s CF 33 Hot Rum, Stephen McDonough’s Jeanneau 40 Seisiun, and Kathy St. Amant’s Hunter 37 Rascal.
For more than 50 years, DRYC has kicked off new years with a race to Malibu and back. It’s the largest random-leg race of the year in Santa Monica Bay, with 65 to 85 boats registered in recent years. The Malibu Race is also the first race of DRYC’s William Berger Series for Performance classes run in conjunction with its William Stein Series for Cruiser classes. Both series are capped off with the Cat Harbor layover races, featuring festivities held Saturday evening at DRYC’s Catalina Island station.
‘Rum Tug Tugger’ Prepares to Doublehand 2026 Pacific Cup
As part of an ongoing series ahead of the 2026 Pacific Cup, Latitude 38 is highlighting the sailors and boats racing to Hawaii this summer. In today’s edition, we check in with Rum Tug Tugger, a Beneteau First 10R sailing under the burgee of Richmond Yacht Club. She will be doublehanded by Kate King and her husband Brian.
Sailing has been a part of Kate King’s life since she was a kid. She grew up sailing with her dad, who also provided the inspiration for the unique boat name.
“My dad bought his first boat when I was about 8, and I’m 64,” King tells Latitude. “So there’s a lot of history there, but we’ll just skip forward to the purchase of the Beneteau in 2007, which was his last boat, and that’s this boat, Rum Tum Tugger. Seven of his boats were named Rum Tum Tugger, who is a character in T.S. Elliott’s Cats. He saw the musical in London in 1981, and immediately renamed his boat. Every boat since then, it’s been Rum Tug Tugger.”
Sailing, and specifically sailing on Rum Tug Tugger, has been a big part of Kate and Brian King’s relationship, emphasized by the venue of their wedding.
“We got married at the Richmond Yacht Club and sailed away on the boat, which was a lot of fun,” King tells us. “We did our own little honeymoon on the boat, but we also sailed back to Hawaii with our friend Charlie Casey on California Riff Rider. My dad gave us a boat as our wedding present, which is … you know what boats are like, so that was like a blessing and a curse, but we’re very happy with it.”
2026 will not be the duo’s first time entering the Pacific Cup. They entered the last Pac Cup in 2024, but were not able to finish the race.
“It wasn’t really until Brian retired in 2022 that we committed to do the Pac Cup in 2024,” King tells us of their Pac Cup background. “We spent a lot; I mean, we had to put in some autopilot, take the boat down to L.A.… And then we had to put in new standing rigging.… [We] replaced a bunch of stuff, and then we had an emergency rudder, carbon emergency rudder, fabricated. I can’t even remember everything we did. We started the race, but I developed a high fever on the second day out, and it was determined by the powers that be — that would be the people that didn’t have a fever — that we should come back. So we didn’t actually finish the race in 2024, which is why we’re doing it in 2026.”
While race entries will be sporting a large crew, as always, there will be several doublehanded entries. Rum Tug Tugger will be one of those, with the Kings going at it alone.
“It’s just so much easier for the two of us together,” Kate tells us of the plan. “Like, there’s no socializing, there’s no negotiation, we’re just good at decision-making together. We know each other’s moods. Historically, we’ve done four-hour shifts, which has worked well for us. I mean, we haven’t done it for 14 days straight. Well, we did four on, four off, actually, when we came back from Hawaii, and unfortunately, after the engine died, that ended up being a 24-day passage.”
“Our goal is not to aggressively trim our sails and get there three hours earlier,” King tells us of their goals. “It’s really to pace ourselves, and to do as best as we can. I don’t want to be enduring to get there. I want to be enjoying it. I think we’ve come to the realization that even though they call it the ‘Fun Race to Hawaii,’ that this kind of endurance event is really more like an adventure, a wilderness adventure. Type-two fun. Having sailed off the coast of California a lot and having done that [return delivery] back from Hawaii, we get to see a lot of wildlife. Seabirds on both ends. But in the middle, there’s not really a lot of that kind of thing. But just the motion of the ocean, the swells, and the different kinds of moods of the water are very enjoyable to me. It’s not unlike downhill skiing, really.”
Though it might seem a ways away now, the start of the 2026 Pacific Cup is rapidly approaching. In the meantime, stay tuned for more Latitude 38 profiles of the racers competing this year.
How Do We Choose the Monthly Latitude 38 Sailing Magazine Cover Photo?
We’re getting ready to send the February issue off to the printer and trying to decide on the cover photo. Since we can pick only 12 issues a year, when we look back we want to think we’ve found some fun, inspiring photos that make us want to both sail more and read more of the adventures of West Coast sailors. Of course, no two issues should be the same, and we want to cover all the many ways West Coast sailors love sailing.
When we go to the magazine page on our website, we scroll down to have a look at the past years and see how we did. What do you think? Looking at 2024 we have a fantastic shot from James Frederick in the South Pacific, a great shot from MEXORC on Banderas Bay, and shots from San Francisco and San Diego bays.
Looking at 2025, we have some great people shots, with our December issue featuring a farewell photo of Richard Spindler on his last Baja Ha-Ha as Poobah, taken by Mitch Perkins. The November photo has a great shot of Mikayla Scot on the boom of the Corsair 880 Tri Jolie. Mikayla later sent us a letter about the photo, which we’ve published in our current January issue. The March issue included our first shot of wing foiling: Bryan McDonald’s awesome photo of Jacob Rosenberg catching a wave under the Golden Gate Bridge on Christmas Eve 2024.
However, looking back at 2024 and 2025, we noted we were missing shots of dinghy sailing. Was it prejudice? Oversight? Lack of good shots? When it comes right down to decision day (coming shortly for February), it’s often just the shot that captivates us in the moment. Luckily, photographer John Liebenberg helped us correct the lack of dinghy shots with a great photo of the International 14 A Bumblebee Named Kate, sailing in the Richmond Small Boat Midwinters, which landed on our January cover.
Since every modern sailor generally has a camera close at hand, we encourage you to send a photo our way. We select 12 magazine cover photos a year. Who knows? Maybe yours will be one that makes it. The odds are better than winning $1.6 billion on Powerball.
What makes a good cover shot? It needs to be high-resolution — generally we like files 3 MB or larger. It needs to be capable of running in a vertical format. Horizontal photos work if they are large enough files and we can crop them to be vertical. Then, a photo that is close to the subject with fun, action and smiling people, not far-away white triangles. But there are exceptions to every rule. So it could be a boat at anchor with no people, like James Frederick’s in the South Pacific.
We don’t want to distract you from sailing, but if you pull out your camera, think about sending your best shots to [email protected].
The February 2026 cover will be revealed on delivery day, Friday, January 30.