Sailors Get Lit for Lighted Yacht Parade
The festive season is well underway, and for the Bay Area, nothing says it better than lighted boats parading up and down the foreshores. Last Saturday, December 7, around 35 boats lined up to parade past the judges in the Oakland/Alameda Estuary between Wind River and the Fortman Marina’s public pier. Entries included sailboats, powerboats, dragon boats, and the local Fire and Rescue and fire boats. Boats and crews went all out for this year’s event to the theme “Merry Estuary.”
This was the 48th Oakland/Alameda Estuary Lighted Yacht Parade. And the photos we received suggest it was a very merry evening indeed!
Most lighted yacht parades will include prizes in various categories. This year’s overall and Grand Prize winner of the Oakland/Alameda Estuary Lighted Yacht Parade was Alameda Community Sailing Center’s Optimist train with skipper Emily Zugnoni.
Below are more winners;
1st Sailing: Eric Korbas, Amanda, Island Yacht Club (#91)
2nd Sailing: Kwame Copeland, Espresso, Fortman (#71)
3rd Sailing: Stephanie DiMock, Electra, Alameda (#22)
1st Power: Bryan Maas, Uno Maas, Encinal (#98)
2nd Power: Jerry Deal, Dragon Lady, Barbary Coast (#49)
3rd Power: Jason/Taryn Loger, Bitt, Benicia (#58)
And then there were the boats that didn’t fit into the sailboat or powerboat categories:
1st Other: Brett Barrett, Pops (#90)
2nd Other: Encinal Junior Sailing, Encinal (#21)
3rd Other: KP Dragons, Dragon Sleigh, Jack London Square (#62)
There’s more to come! San Francisco, Richmond Yacht Club, City of Sausalito, San Diego Bay and Dana Point Harbor are all lighting up the water this weekend. See the full list of events in our Calendar.
San Diego Yacht Club’s Third Hot Rum Race Concludes the Series
Bob Betancourt was out on the water again last weekend, this time photographing the third and last race in San Diego Yacht Club (SDYC)’s Hot Rum Series. As Bob said, there wasn’t much wind, but he still took some beautiful photos, which we share in the gallery below.
Despite the lack of wind on this final race day, SDYC considered this year’s Hot Rum Series to be a “hallmark event,” with the following report.
There is an old wise [wise wives’?] tale that the three-race Hot Rum Series will feature one “perfect weather race” with sun, no clouds, flat seas and a perfect westerly breeze in which boats can reach/run around the course; a second race with stormy conditions not limited to blustery southerly winds, significant swell/waves, and maybe some rain to make it really miserable; and a third race that has little to no wind.
Hot Rum Series races 1 and 2 were nearly identical, featuring the most desirable “perfect weather” conditions. Winds were in the mid- to high teens from that sweet westerly direction. Consider the finish times for Jim Madden’s (Stark Raving Mad) consistent top-level performance: Race 1 finish at 1411 and Race 2 finish even faster at 1407. Race 1 enjoyed 110 finishers in about 32 minutes, while Race 2 clocked 114 finishers in about one hour.
And so, while the morning of Race 3 dawned bright, it was also warm and dry, suggesting light Santa Ana conditions — and so it was. The Race Committee administered a 20-minute AP (postponement) due to the absolute lack of wind across the start area and a flood current that would have caused boats attempting to start to pile up within the first few hundred feet of the course. By 1230, there was enough wind to get boats moving down the course toward mark 1, with marginally better wind outside the harbor.
But there wasn’t enough for most sailors. By the time the race clock ran out at the 4:30 p.m. time limit (Sailing Instruction 14, if you want to have a peek), 34 boats had finished in the preceding 30 minutes, with Jim Madden’s third-place Stark Raving Mad crossing the line at 1558. Even subtracting the 20-minute postponement, his finish time would have been 1538, around an hour and a half longer than his Race 1 or Race 2 elapsed time. Race 3’s first-to-finish boat Still 2 Crazy, owned/sailed by the trio of son/father Erik and Jon Shampain and Robert Plant, made up for their unfortunate Race 1 score of DNF that involved a mark tangle.
In the overall series scores, Class 6 was the winner. The top three boats were J boats that do especially well on a powerful reaching course. Third place was awarded to J/105 J Almighty, skippered by Mike Hatch. Second place went to J/105 Perseverance, owned and driven by Bennet Greenwald and Dave Vieregg. And first place went to defending Overall winner, Jim Madden and crew aboard his J/100 Stark Raving Mad.
Thank you to perennial event supporter Mt. Gay Barbados Rum, and to the volunteers serving on the Protest Committee arbitrating knowledge and experiences on the race course, and to the Race Committee volunteers who manage the starts, mind the buoys, and score this winter hallmark event.
See more results at sdyc.org.
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Latitude 38 Holiday Subscription-Special — Get Yours Now!
Yes, this is another shameless plug for our print magazine. We love seeing the paper and ink come together to create an expression of sailing — here, there, and wherever the wind blows. As the year makes its way to a close, 2025 is around the corner, and we plan the next 12 months of Latitude 38, we want to take this opportunity to share a discount on subscriptions to the print magazine.
You may have seen our ad on page 58 of this month’s issue:
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Wet Weekend Weather and King Tides Return
Saturday looks likely to bring classic conditions for flooding in Sausalito and other North Bay estuaries. There’s a rainy storm that will arrive with strong winds and a king tide that will peak at the Golden Gate at 0945. These are the conditions that put Gate 5 Road and many other areas of Richardson Bay underwater. Though now there are far fewer resident boats on Richardson Bay, those that remain will face the winter storm conditions that have damaged so many others.
The California Coastal Commission is again asking anyone who’s out braving the elements to submit photos of king tides that will be occurring today through Sunday. You can submit king-tide photos to the Coastal Commission here. Woody Skoriak caught some great photos in Sausalito during a November king-tide weekend with much nicer weather. The rain and southerly wind could make it more dramatic this weekend.
Unfortunately, the Saturday weather also looks like as if it will be challenging for midwinters and Saturday night lighted yacht parades. We hope everyone makes the best of it and has dock lines, fenders and chafing gear ready for the winter weather.
Max Ebb: Rainy Day Projects (Perfect for the Weekend Ahead)
“Another strike against land-based weather forecasts,” Lee sighed as we both looked out the windows at torrential rain falling on the docks. I had volunteered to help with youth sailing classes on winter weekends. We would have canceled for the day, but the optimistic forecast that morning promised “clear skies by afternoon.”
Lee was there because she had convinced a traffic court judge that this would count as her required public service after she was busted for blowing through a four-way stop sign on her bike. It was not her first offense.
“Get real. I could see there was, like, no cross traffic,” she insisted, still annoyed by the whole incident. “Anyone can watch that intersection all day, and, like, not a single car comes to a full stop. They all roll through at a safe speed once they see that it’s clear, and I do exactly the same thing, exactly, on my bike. It’s just that I’m higher up with a better view and my safe speed is like, a little faster….”
“You’ll get over it,” advised the club’s official youth sailing instructor, recalling his grandfather’s advice about traffic tickets from the distant past: “Just pay the two dollars.”
“If it were still two dollars,” Lee complained.
“But our immediate problem,” I reminded her over our lunch of expertly prepared macaroni and cheese, “is that we have to come up with indoor activities for all these restless young sailors. I guess we could do another knot-tying session.”
“We did sailing knots last week,” the instructor reminded us. “And frankly, they seemed a little bored even then.”
“But the weather was perfect for sailing last week,” Lee recalled.
“Right, the weather was perfect last week; the kids could have been out on the water all day. My bad.” The youth instructor was a college student and a great sailor, always in demand as big-boat crew.
“You’ll get over it,” Lee returned the instructor’s advice.
“Remember what they say about tacticians,” I added, seeing no need to give this kid a break. “You’re only as good as your last call.”
“All right, here’s what we can do today,” the instructor suggested after watching the rain for another minute. “Paper boats. We can float them on the puddles in the parking lot.”
“Even better,” said Lee, “let’s teach them to make paper self-righting lifeboats. A little more complex than your basic paper boat, but they demonstrate the significance of the roll metacenter: It’s at the center of the rocker radius, a virtual center of rotation of a floating object. And if it’s below the center of gravity, the boat will be unstable in roll, and if the boat is placed upside down on the table, the boat will right itself.”
“No, but I know where to find them.”
Continue reading. [This story is fun!].
“Itchy Feet” — A Great Gift for the Sailors on Your List
