Master Mariners 2026 — Clash d’Elegance

If we had to pick just one event on one weekend to represent the fun, color, spectacle and history of sailing on San Francisco Bay — not to mention some of the coolest people sailing the coolest boats — it would be a no-brainer: the annual Master Mariners Regatta, sailed as always on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend (May 23 this year). And not just for the eclectic assemblage of classic schooners, gaffers, cutters and ketches — a few of them more than a century old — but also for the weather this event almost always seems to luck into: bright sun, whitecaps, spray flying and 20–25 knots of chilly westerly blasting through the Golden Gate and down the Slot into the Berkeley Hills. These conditions often send small craft scurrying for calmer water, but for the 40 boats entered in the 2026 Master Mariners Regatta, this is nirvana.

This year’s fleet ranged in size from the 23-ft Bear class up to the 132-ft brigantine Matthew Turner. The Turner took the ceremonial first gun in the (non-racing) Parade Class at noon. The first official start gun fired for the Bears, fielding five boats this year, at 12:15, with the rest of the 10 divisions following suit in five-minute intervals.

Latitude had a correspondent “embedded” in the fray this year. Publisher John Arndt sailed aboard John Egelston’s spectacularly restored 56-ft P-Class cutter Water Witch, a “local girl” built in 1928 at the Stone Boatyard in Oakland.

Now, John is no slouch when it comes to sailing. In addition to helming Latitude for more than a decade, he’s helmed several of his own boats to racing victories in various events. How was this level of skill and expertise utilized aboard Water Witch?

“My main role was rail meat,” he says.

Read more and see the great photo spread in this month’s Latitude 38 here..