Sighting the Beer Can Racing Season on the Horizon

Are you ready for the beer can racing season? This is the final week of Standard Time in the Pacific Time Zone. Set your alarm for 1 a.m. on Sunday morning, March 9, so that you can get up and set your clocks forward an hour for Daylight Saving Time. (Or, save yourself the interrupted sleep and just reset them before you go to bed. Or, maybe by 2025 all your clocks are smart enough to reset themselves?)

In the First Week of Daylight Saving Time

With more light in the evening, some race organizers waste not even one week to kick off their beer can racing season. Among those are:

• Santa Cruz YC will be first out of the starting gate on March 11 with their Tuesday night Developmental Series. It will run every Tuesday night throughout DST and offers an A Fleet for “more experienced crews and higher performance boats,” and a B Fleet for “new racers and lower performance boats.”
• Santa Cruz racers can sail again the very next day and every Wednesday night throughout DST. SCYC doesn’t actually organize these super-casual “races.”
• Also starting on Wednesday the 12th will be a Spring Series in St. Francis YC’s J/22 fleet. It will run weekly through April 2.
• Berkeley YC will transition from Sunday afternoon Chowder races to Friday night races. The last Chowder race will be on March 9, with the first Friday night race on March 14. BYC racers enjoy a BBQ dinner after Friday night races, as do many other beer-can sailors in various venues.

Beer Can Races Starting in Late March and Early April

More venues start up their evening race season later in March or in the first week of April:

• Sequoia Yacht Club’s weekly Wednesday night Sunset Series will start on March 19. Registration is open on Jibeset.
• Monterey Peninsula YC’s weekly Wednesday night Sunset Series will also start on March 19.
• Weekly Wednesday night racing will begin at Richmond YC on April 2.
• On that same Wednesday night, April 2, races start at Vallejo YC and
• Sunset Sails start at Coyote Point YC in San Mateo.
• Benicia YC will host a Thursday night series starting on April 3.
• On April 4, Corinthian YC’s tricky but popular weekly Friday night races will start out of Belvedere Cove.

This weekend, we received the following message from EYC: “Encinal Yacht Club invites you to participate in the 2025 Twilight Series. The Notice of Race is now posted on Jibeset and entries are open. The first day of the spring series racing will be held on April 4, and every other Friday until May 30. Summer racing starts July 11, and every other Friday until September 5. Please join us on Friday evenings for fun, competitive racing on the Estuary followed by good fellowship afterwards at the EYC clubhouse.  Register today at www.jibeset.net/EYC000.php?RG=T004997497.”

Lake series, generally speaking, won’t get going until May.

If you’re new to yacht racing, welcome! We’re excited for new blood. Be sure to read the Notice of Race and Sailing Instructions (if any) for the series you’re entering and keep a copy handy on board. To get in the spirit, review Rob Moore’s Ten Commandments of Beer Can Racing here.

You can find more beer can series, listed in alphabetical order, starting on page 22 of the 2025 Northern California Sailing Calendar and YRA Master Schedule. See page 12 for a diagram of racing signal flags, and some very basic racing rules on page 14.

We’ll include a Beer Can Series section in Latitude 38’s Calendar starting with the April issue. We haven’t tried to include Southern California series in this report, but we welcome info about those in the Comments section below (please include relevant links).