Island Yacht Club’s Sadie Hawkins Race Interrupted by Rowers
March 22 started as a beautiful day for the Island Yacht Club Sadie Hawkins race but quickly became chaotic. When the mark-set team started dropping marks and the race committee team was arriving, we learned that there was a high school rowing competition on the Alameda-Oakland Estuary at the same time as our sailing race. Even though their rowing event was not officially permitted by the Coast Guard, we wanted a safe race for our racers and to allow both events to occur. After discussions with the rowing event leader, we agreed to delay our race for two hours until they started their last rowing race.
Everything seemed to be smooth. We started our first fleet on time and were preparing for the next start when a group of rowers rowed through the second start of our race. That was not the worst of it. Additionally, the adults guiding the rowers yelled at our racers, who were in a starting position, to move out of their way. These rowers were not racing. They were returning to the marina where they’d launched. Ninety-nine percent of all the other rowing competitors launched from the Jack London area, so we were not advised that anyone would be rowing back our way.
As race PRO, I repeatedly asked them to move quickly away from our racers several times. When they kept yelling at our racers, I advised them that I would report them to the Coast Guard. They stopped yelling and moved.
Our mark-set team met with the event leader after the chaos, and it was suggested that an apology be sent to IYC regarding the chaos caused by their rowing guides. In the end, we are happy to report that we are receiving that apology and a promise to obtain the proper Coast Guard credentials when they plan their events. Communication and mutual respect on and off the water always matter. In the end, several hundred Bay Area high school rowers and about 20 sailboats shared the Estuary that day.
Glad cooler heads prevailed . We’re all in this together !
Ages ago a whale boat race encountered a racing fleet near Alcatraz
The diagrams looked like the Battle of Actium
[a sea battle Cleopatra & her domestic partner Mark Anthony lost]
I think under the rules of the road
a rowboat is a powered vessel
& must give way to a sailboat
unless they have fishing lines out.
The high school regatta needed a USCG permit.
For sure, the rowing event should have had a permit. If they had, at least the CG could have given a heads up to both groups.But I wonder how much it would have helped. When applying for a permit, it’s hard to be highly specific about your racing area. On the Estuary you can specify the eastern and western extremities of the portion you plan to use, but that’s about it. So the probability of some overlap between two events is pretty high.
And it sounds like the rowers and their escorts who caused the worst of the problem weren’t even racing, so they weren’t bound by the permit. But hopefully the high school group has learned something.