Our Favorite Bay Trails

While looking at the crowds on shore cheering at SailGP, we were reminded how many people can see San Francisco Bay but don’t know how to get onto the Bay. Over the past decades, there has been a great increase and improvement of the trails around the Bay, but our favorite ‘Bay trails’ always end in the Bay.

The Bay is ringed with numerous launch ramps where Lasers, Hobies, Day Sailers, Thistles, West Wight Potters and many other small boats are launched to explore the Bay. They’re pretty simple — a ramp with deep enough water to float a boat at the end through most of the tide cycle and a place to park your car and trailer while you go sailing. There are still quite a few remaining but they’re also getting pinched by development or falling out of service due to lack of maintenance. We’ve listed three below; two we’ll identify and a third one is for someone to identify by noon tomorrow for a chance to win a Latitude 38 T-shirt.

It’s nice to walk or ride around the Bay, but it’s just so much better to get onto the Bay. So, now we ask: If you were going to launch a sailing dinghy, where would you go? What are your favorite small-boat launch ramps? We wrote about a new one for windsurfers in Richmond, there’s Crissy Field and Sherman Island, and many more for kiteboarders, windsurfers and others throughout the Bay and Delta. But where are they all? Email us here with your favorite place to launch small boats in the Bay Area. If you have a photo, send that too.