December Yacht Racing and Events Preview

By Christine Weaver | December 1, 2021 | San Francisco Bay Area |

More Midwinters

The month of December is relatively quiet for stand-alone races, but this month more midwinter series join the list that started racing in November.

For Big Boats

Tiburon Yacht Club’s Bob & Esther Mott Midwinter Series will begin this Saturday. You can sign up on Jibeset.

C&C 29 and Ultimate 20 converging in light air — Starting in slow motion at the TYC Midwinters in February. Ian Matthew’s C&C 29-1 *Siento el Viento* (left) won the Singlehanded Division. The Ultimate 20s had a one-design division. (Results here.)
© 2021 Latitude 38 Media LLC / Chris

For Small Boats

Richmond YC’s Small Boat Midwinters will kick off on Sunday, December 5.

Lake Merritt Sailing Club’s Robinson Midwinter Series for dinghies will begin on Saturday, December 11. Contact the club’s commodore, Gary Hartsock, at (510) 653-1743 for more info. (The club, based on the shores of Oakland’s Lake Merritt, has no website.)

See our Calendar in the December issue of Latitude 38 for much more. Additional midwinter series will get their turn to start in January; we’ll preview those in late December.

For Armchair Sailors

Learn About Weather and More

Island Yacht Club is offering a monthly four-session Weather, Tides & Instrumentation webinar series this winter, on Mondays via Zoom at 7 p.m. Pacific Time. Classes are $25 each, or all four for $80 ($40 for IYC members and IYC Women’s Sailing Seminar students and instructors).

The classes are:

December 6: Weather Smarts for Beyond the Bay Area, with Behan and Jamie Gifford, Sailing Totem.
January 10: Local Weather on the Bay, with Rick Whiting.
February 7: Tides and Currents in the San Francisco Bay, Kame Richards, Pineapple Sails.
March 14: What’s New & What’s Working in Weather Instrumentation, Martin Spizman, Davis Instruments.

IYC will donate 25% of the fees to a marine nonprofit of each speaker’s choice.

Watch Other People Sail

Our favorite event to watch onscreen in December is the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race. The race starts in Sydney Harbour at 1 p.m. AEDT on Boxing Day; the timing is perfect for a break from the festivities of Christmas Day here on the West Coast of the USA (6 p.m. PST). You can watch a webcast of the live broadcast on the home page of the race website. The start and first leg — about the first hour of the 628-mile race to Tasmania — makes great viewing. Sydney Harbour is scenic and windy. RSH attracts the big (in size and cost) super-maxis, but also the multitudes. This year’s regatta has 106 entries. A doublehanded division will debut with 20 boats signed up. Sydney Hobart was canceled last year due to COVID-19.

We plan to preview lighted boat parades and other holiday-centric events in this space on Friday, so check back in.