Halftime in the Estuary: OYC’s Sweet Sixteen Series Gears Up for Round Two
If you are looking to escape the bone-chilling summer Slot winds, the punishing chop of the Central Bay and the monotony of the midweek grind, Oakland Yacht Club has the perfect antidote. The first half of OYC’s legendary Sweet Sixteen Series wrapped up on June 17, leaving a fleet of over 40 boats sharper, warmer and thoroughly entertained. Now, as the fleet takes a brief midsummer breather, the stage is set for an epic second half starting July 8.
The first eight weeks of the 2026 series proved to be a master class in tactical, light-air Estuary racing. When 41 of the 46 registered boats crossed the starting line for Race #1, they were greeted by a classic Estuary puzzle — an 8-knot breeze rapidly dying against a ferocious flood current. Without a dedicated mark-set boat to shorten the course on the fly, the race committee made the proactive call to finish Fleets A and B as they clawed their way across the line, abandoning the rest to save the fleet from an endless drift.
But at OYC, a tough day on the water only paves the way for a great night at the clubhouse. Racers quickly packed away their boats and headed up to the club to swap stories over an open bar, a hearty buffet and the evening’s prizes.
Subsequent weeks offered the fleet plenty of opportunities for redemption. Race #2 saw the wind hold firm, allowing the entire fleet to complete their courses and cross the finish line with time to spare. Race #3 kept skippers and crews on their toes as a shifting breeze clocked around the Estuary, creating local wind holes and sudden gusts that demanded constant sail trim and tactical focus.
The theme continued through the remaining races of the first half: challenging, light-to-moderate air that rewarded the tacticians who could read the current and find the lanes. It’s the kind of racing that makes you a better sailor — where every minor trim adjustment and smart tactical decision directly translates to boat speed.
Join the fleet for the Second Half!
Did you miss out on the action this spring? Don’t worry — the slate is wiped clean for the second half of the Sweet Sixteen Series, which kicks off on Wednesday, July 8.
Whether you are looking for highly competitive fleet racing or just want a scenic, warm-weather Wednesday night sail with a fantastic post-race social scene, OYC welcomes you. Drag your boat over, round up your crew, and find out why Wednesday nights on the Estuary are the best-kept secret in Bay Area racing.
Head to go.oycracing.com/sweetsixteen2026 to sign up for the second half.
Good Jibes #249: 2026 Scuba Show, on Location With Host Ryan Foland – Part 1
This week’s host, Ryan Foland, joins us from the Scuba Show in Long Beach, California, on May 30–31, to go behind the scenes at the diving event of the year.
In this Part 1 you’ll hear why scuba and sailors are a perfect match, learn the top and not-so-top places to go scuba diving, meet Scuba Queen USA 2025, soak in the sights and sounds of the wild event, and get a sneak preview of the incredible survival story of Chris Lemons.
Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:
- Meeting Kimber Collins, Scuba Queen USA 2025
- The story behind the incident on September 18, 2012, aboard the Bibby Topaz
- Sneaking buddy Lawrence into the show
- Chris Lemons explains saturation diving
- The dynamic positioning system that holds dive vessels in place
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots — follow and leave a 5-star review if you’re feeling the Good Jibes!
Learn more at ScubaShow.com and connect with Ryan at Ryan.Online.
Check out the episode and show notes for much more detail.
Hand-Crafted Custom Captain’s Hat!
Try a Tri at the 2026 Corsair Nationals
The 2026 Corsair Nationals are coming to Encinal Yacht Club in Alameda on July 17–19, and the trimarans are already lining up. About 25 boats are registered for three days of racing: Friday short courses off Alameda, a Saturday Bay‑tour distance race, and Sunday heats on the Berkeley Circle. The title sponsor, Corsair Marine, began building the Ian Farrier-designed F‑27 folding trimaran in Chula Vista in the late ’80s. At least five of those original boats will be on this year’s start line as a one‑design class, including longtime Bay racers WingIt and SeaBird. Three of the latest Corsair 880s are trailering up from Southern California to help form another hot class, and a range of other designs will fill out the Open division, with the whole regatta scored on PHRF.
The Corsair Nationals is an annual showcase of performance multihull sailing across North America. San Francisco Bay last hosted in 2013 out of Ballena Bay YC. The 2027 Nationals will sail on Lake Ontario, and 2028 in Sarasota, FL. This year, the Bay Area Multihull Association (BAMA) teamed up with Corsair to bring the event back to the Estuary, with Encinal YC as host. Thankfully, Corsair doesn’t limit its support to boats sold from the factory. Designer Farrier’s plans spawned a few thousand custom‑built tris, generally known as F‑boats, ranging from 22 to 39 feet, and many of those homebuilt rockets are now part of the Corsair/Farrier tribe. BAMA’s 2026 racing fleet is almost entirely trimarans with center‑hull cabins, and accommodations aboard the Nationals fleet will range from minimalist “cubby camping” to boats with ovens and full showers. With everyone rafting up at Encinal, the docks should look like an open‑house boat show for aspiring performance-multihull sailors.
BAMA is using the Nationals to make multihull sailing easier to try. Member boats are inviting local sailors aboard to “give it a tri.” The event website hosts a crew/skipper finder, and board members are matching inquiries with skippers looking for extra hands. As of this writing, there are still a few crew spots scattered across the fleet, from mellow learning rides to full‑send race programs. If you’ve been curious about life on three hulls, this is a good way to find out.
The shoreside plan looks almost as busy as the race course. Boats will gather Thursday evening at Encinal for “welcome beverages aboard,” followed by a Friday social dinner for entrants at a local Alameda venue, Saturday dinner back at EYC, and awards and prizes at the club Sunday afternoon. The whole production is made possible by Corsair Marine and a strong roster of partners and sponsors: 180 Marine, Windcraft Multihulls, Sunrise Yacht Products, Stark Miller, Colligo Marine and QuanVerge.
BAMA invites Latitude38 readers to come check it out from land or water, say hello on the dock, or even grab a spot on a tri. Start here: sfbama.org/2026corsairnationals.
Whale Tales and Spinnaker Reaches in YRA’s Half Moon Bay Race
All week long, crews had feared a slow, upwind slog “down” the coast for Saturday’s Half Moon Bay Race, but by the time check-ins began, the fluky weather had stopped being fickle. The race committee announced a course taking San Francisco’s R2 buoy to port, setting up a bear-away for an ideal spinnaker reach in calm seas and warm breezes. The only flukes that materialized were dozens of humpback whales cavorting as the 19 competitors sailed through.
“The ocean felt alive that day,” Erin Waid of Wildcard said. “The calm seas gave us a front-row seat to everything happening around us. Birds were diving, seals were barking and splashing through feeding activity, and everywhere you looked there seemed to be another blow, another whale surfacing, or another whale tail waving ‘hello.’ By that point, I was doing a lot more whale watching than wind watching.”
The weather was a relief after the Yacht Racing Association of San Francisco Bay’s offshore series had been impacted by a gale and dangerous seas in early June, cancelling the iconic Farallones race. This time, Mother Nature more than made up for it.
With lighter air, though, calling puffs became critical.
“There were narrow ribbons of very light air weaving through larger areas of pressure. Finding a way through those transitions without getting stalled became one of the bigger challenges of the race,” Waid said.
Visibility in the late afternoon made it possible to see clear back to Mount Tam from just off Colorado Reef. The only limit on visibility was the lack of anything farther away to spot. With the calm seas, whale watching became a key obstacle to overcome, as distracted racers glanced away from sail trim to catch the giant cetaceans feeding, diving, and even breaching spectacularly both far away and alongside.
“On board we started calling out ‘danger whales’ and ‘party whales.’ ‘Danger whales’ were the ones you needed to keep track of because they were near our course. ‘Party whales’ were the ones that were just fun to watch and kept stealing our attention.”
The 28.5-mile event also fell on the Summer Sailstice, with teams registering their float plans for the international day to celebrate sailing and get people out on the water. The solstice also brings the longest day of the year — 14 hours, 47 minutes of daylight — for Northern California. Crews enjoyed sunlight from the moment the sail covers came off until long after the fast boats were tied up back at the dock.
While seas were calm, a few larger swells still rolled through, validating the ongoing beach-hazard and sneaker-wave warnings due to a long-period southerly swell. White breakers were visible all day to many sailors, though conditions just a mile offshore were sedate.
RACE RESULTS:
John Arens’ Reverie took first in PHRF 1, with Nick Grebe’s Wildcard winning monohull line honors before correcting out into second place. Saoirse, skippered by Russell Huebschle, took third.
In PHRF 2, Timothy Roche’s Zaff took first and had the best corrected time of all divisions at 5:45:40. In second was Steven Gordon’s Inconceivable, with third going to Vera Cruz, helmed by Michael Johnson. Brian Turner’s Cruzsea Baby took fourth, while earning a bullet for their season standings.
In the multihull fleet, Truls Myklebust’s Caliente took first. Rick Waltonsmith’s Round Midnight earned line honors with an elapsed time of 4:46:55 before correcting into second, while Rafi Yahalom’s Tri Jolie finished third.
“It was the perfect day,” Kaelyn Grebe said. “Lots of whales and nice weather. I had a lot of fun!”
Against the Grain: The Master Mariners Wooden Boat Show
There are always people willing to go against the grain, and the owners, craftsmen, crew and volunteers that put on the annual Master Mariners Wooden Boat Show at the Corinthian Yacht Club are among the few. Walking the docks of the show is like entering a living museum where you rediscover the allure and aura that surround handcrafted works of art. These are people who work with the 10 digits on their hands and not the terabytes of digits in data centers.
The living part of this living museum is that these boats are far more than showpieces. Many of them were racing in 25 knots of breeze in the Master Mariners Regatta four weeks ago. The 42-ft S&S yawl Fairwyn raced in the regatta, and also did the 2025 Baja Ha-Ha.
The San Francisco Maritime Museum’s 43-ft replica of a San Francisco Bay Chinese shrimp-fishing junk, Grace Quan, was on hand to show how the Chinese, fishing from China Camp in Tiburon, caught shrimp in the late 1800s.
There were 16 Hurricane class one-designs built at Nunes Brothers in Sausalito, and today only one survives. Random was in Kers Clausen’s family for seven decades and changed hands a couple of years ago when Phil Mills took her on and has since been busy restoring her. Like the Bear and the Bird, the Hurricane was a local, Bay Area class that dwindled over time. The Birds, Bears and Farallone Clippers are survivors, and thankfully, there are members of a new generation who are captivated by the magic of wood and are taking on the preservation of these heritage pieces of art.
Call of the Sea and Spaulding Marine Center were there to help connect people to some of the institutions that keep alive the skills, trades and art of sailing, building, and repairing wooden boats. Vibe coding has very little utility in this crowd. It’s about working with your hands and building something you can hold.
Since we spend our days working with a keyboard and mouse, we’re always cautious when shaking hands with the people whose hands work with a bandsaw or pounding caulking into planks.
We have enough photos from one day on the docks to fill several photo albums (do they still exist?). The camaraderie of the crowd, the pride of ownership, the joy that emerges from showing the details, the varnish, the history and lore of each vessel shine through every year. We feel lucky that the owners who care for these vessels are willing to share them and let us climb aboard to explore the intricate detail that went into building and rebuilding these boats over many decades.
if you’ve never been to a wooden boat show, make sure to make a note in your calendar for a year from now. It will inspire you to care for your boat just a bit more and reconnect you with the soul of sailing in a way that modern boats just can’t manage. We thank all these folks who continue to go against the grain to preserve the culture and beauty of all these classic vessels.
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