Catching Up With Out The Gate Sailing

It’s been a while since we’ve checked in with our friend Ben Shaw, host of the Out The Gate Sailing podcast. Just last night, Shaw posted an episode featuring one of our favorite themes: young people with old boats. Ben interviewed Lauren Moody, a former Navy sailor who is grappling with the agony and ecstasy of refurbishing an old boat. “After moving to the San Francisco area a decade ago, [Moody] built a community of sailing friends at the Travis Marina,” Ben wrote on his website. “It was there she first laid eyes on Intrepid, a Bob Perry designed Islander Freeport 36. It was in bad shape, nearly sinking at the dock. But it took some time for her to convince the owner to sell. Now she’s putting much time and effort into bringing the boat back to Bristol condition, doing all the work herself and learning much along the way.”

A few weeks ago, Shaw posted episode 33 with Jim Hancock, the founder and president of the nascent and highly anticipated (and much covered by Latitude 38) San Francisco Sailing Science Center. Ben took a deep dive with Hancock, who is a longtime Bay Area sailor and sailing instructor. Hancock holds a master’s in naval architecture and marine engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT. “The reason I went to MIT is I had started sailing as a teenager, and I knew that’s what I wanted to do,” Hancock said in the episode. “I wanted to work on the water and work around boats. That’s what I loved, and something I loved as a hobby or sports activity at a young age directed my career.”

When he was a young man, Hancock’s family owned a ski boat on Lake Tahoe, and went to a local shop to buy parts. In the store, there was video of a Hobie Cat sailing. “My dad said, ‘We need one of those,’ and we went home with a Hobie Cat.” Hancock said it was a few years before he really started sailing the boat out of Redwood City “and learning on our own by making a lot of mistakes.”

Hancock eventually went cruising for several years onboard his Freya 39 before returning to the Bay, where he began teaching sailing for Club Nautique. “But I always felt there was an opportunity for a better classroom — with models and wind tunnels and wave tanks.” Hancock imagined a high-end, two-boat racing school that would also teach the physics and science of sailing. The concept was partially absorbed by Hancock’s friend Travis Lund, the executive director at the Treasure Island Sailing Center. Hancock said TISC had the “scale” in terms of the boating infrastructure, as well as the classroom space to expound on deeper science-related sailing concepts.

As Hancock continued to gestate his idea for the Sailing Science Center, Lund made him aware of an empty airplane hangar on Treasure Island.

Hancock is excited about the former Pan Am hangar’s being home to an interactive museum. “The future site will give people the ability to go to the museum, then go have a firsthand sailing experience if they want,” Hancock said, referring to TISC.

Hancock also gave listeners a glimpse of what Treasure Island will become. “Ten years from now, it will be unrecognizable,” he said, referring to a bombardment of development about to take place. “There will be a tenfold population increase; most of the [existing] structures will be gone.”

We are excited that the future T.I. will be rooted so firmly in sailing. For more information on Hancock’s vision, go to sailingscience.org.

Looking ahead, Ben Shaw said he’s excited about upcoming Out The Gate episodes. “I just spoke with Rich Jepsen, vice president US Sailing and a longtime OCSC instructor (he built the place with Anthony Sandberg). We talked about a lot of things, including making sailing more inclusive.”

Stay tuned!