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International Racing
Money can do a lot of things, but it can’t change the weather. Sometimes, though, you have to wonder. The New York SailGP event, held this past weekend on the Hudson off lower Manhattan, managed to find a perfect weather window after a week of heavy rain and fog in the Northeast.
Washing Waxing Varnishing
Westwind Washing, Waxing, Varnishing. Serving the Bay Area for more than 25 years.
This month marks the 75th anniversary of one of the most horrendous events of World War II, which occurred right here in the Bay Area.
International Racing
As the growing body of SailGP fans anticipate today’s start of the New York event, the six international teams that will take to the start line have a new image to add to their vision of series supremacy.
Back in 1933, sixteen 16-year-old boys founded the club as the Ionic Sailing Club. The teenage founders included three sets of brothers: the Stephens brothers, the Colberg brothers, and Fred and Jim Van Dyke.
Learning to sail on San Francisco Bay
We joined about a dozen other boat owners who volunteered boats and time to teach almost 40 inspired women new skills and take several for their very first sail. It was a perfect intro weekend with gentle breezes and warm temperatures. Now what?
Treasure Island Update
Have you wondered about Treasure Island and Olympic sailing's move west, and the silence after the bold announcements of 2018? Yes, it's been quiet, but only because the folks behind FAST, the Facility for Advanced Sailing and Technology, have to move at the pace of larger forces.
PICYA Yacht Club Challenge
Ten yacht clubs raced 10 matched J/22s in a three-day challenge to win some heavy silver Friday through Saturday. Friday's windy race on heavy ebb-chop took the four-person teams, with women at the helm, from St. Francis Yacht Club, which provided the boats, to event co-host Richmond Yacht Club.
The World Famous L 38
Here’s your June Caption Contest(!) Please comment below, or email us here.
Resourceful Sailor Series
On Friday, the Resourceful Sailor found that his outboard-motor bracket on his 1985 Pacific Seacraft Flicka 20 Sampaguita was making an unsual noise.
Former Stanford head sailing coach John Vandemoer will not serve a prison sentence for his part in the college admissions scandal. Vandemoer was the first person to be sentenced as a result of the federal sting called Operation Varsity Blues.
Resourceful Sailor Series
I could hear a ticking sound from the direction of the stern as I was gently rolling side to side. With the sails up and the motor off, the new and unusual sound warranted investigation. I finally tracked it to the…
Treasure Island Sailing Center, which has worked with 11th Hour Racing since 2013, looks forward to expanding their STEM program with the funding.
Race to Alaska
It was the best kind of win for what’s fast becoming the best kind of race. Due to glitches on boats and ashore, nobody knew who was ahead or who would win the 700+ mile Race to Alaska until they hove into view off the Ketchikan Yacht Club yesterday.
Rose and Frank Corser were both in their mid-30s in 1972 when they set sail from Newport Beach for the Marquesas Islands aboard their 35-ft Seagoer.
We were shocked to receive the news that the German pilot schooner Elbe No. 5  — which several generations of Bay Area sailors will know best as 'our' lovely Wander Bird — sank on Saturday after a collision with a commercial ship on the Elbe River near Hamburg.
We once saw a man walk on water. We were sailing back home to Lowrie in San Rafael after a long, splendid day on the Bay. As we close-reached up the channel, we saw a man . . . surfing without a wave, sail or kite. If we hadn't been keeping up on watersports trends, we may very well have thought that someone was walking on water.
We were out of Cabo San Lucas headed for Puerto Vallarta when a frigatebird came swooping in, circling, circling, gliding in a steep left bank until its wingtip nearly touched the ocean, the top of its wings black, glistening in the late afternoon sun.
Latitude Logowear
Congratulations to two winners of Latitude 38 swag. Stephen Buckingham picked up a copy of the June issue at South Beach Yacht Club at San Francisco's Pier 40 on May 31.
Peter Bailey’s lovely yawl Bertie was capsized by what he believes was a white squall 65 miles off Atlantic City, New Jersey, at about 8 p.m. on May 29. Bailey and his wife, Heidi Snyder — the only ones aboard at the time — managed to activate their EPIRB and were rescued about three hours after the capsize.
Race to Alaska
The docks at Victoria’s Inner Harbor were a carnage-fest of broken gear, torn sails, drowned radios, lost hatches, hulls or amas filled with water, and things lost overboard.
Saturday, June 8, is World Oceans Day. The United Nations website tells us that oceans play a major role in everyday life. And put it simply: “They are the lungs of our planet, providing most of the oxygen we breathe.”
Eight Bells
Lowell Orton North, the founder of North Sails, Olympic gold medalist, and sailing icon of his time, passed away on Sunday. There will not likely be another sailor like Lowell North. He was 89 years old.
On the windward shore of the Big Island [meaning California], a stone's throw from the cool Monterey Bay trades, unfolds the all-new Antrim 27 ‘C’. Number 28 (27 were built by USI) is now under construction by builder Joe Kitchell.
Washing Waxing Varnishing
Westwind Washing, Waxing, Varnishing. Serving the Bay Area for more than 25 years.
Barry Spanier has his sights set on one of the most pressing environmental issues of our time: plastics in the ocean. Spanier conceived of a boat called the "Baleen" (also known as Ships that Scour the Sea), named after filter-feeder whales.
On June 1, the American team of Mike Holt and Carl Smit won the 51-boat 5O5 Euro Cup Riva del Garda, the second leg of the Euro Cup series. Sailed at Fraglia della Vela Riva on Italy's Lake Garda, the regatta came down to the last leg of the last race.
Excellent conditions made for a quick Delta Ditch Run on Saturday, June 1. A flood current and consistent breeze in the teens carried most of the sailors to Stockton with plenty of time left to party. The 29th edition of the 65-mile race from Richmond to Stockton garnered 109 starters.
The Figure 8 Voyage
After nearly 250 days at sea and 31,000 continuous, nonstop miles — including a lap around the Southern Ocean and one and a half times around the world — Randall Reeves has made his first stop of the Figure 8 Voyage 2.0 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
One of the great things about winning the first edition of any new offshore race is, if you’re first to finish, you also set the new course record.
If variety is the spice, then the fifth annual Race To Alaska — the first segment of which started today — is a veritable jambalaya of waterborne fun.