Bluewater Bash Bashes Out the Gate Today

The Bluewater Bash started this morning from the San Francisco Cityfront. One sailor’s opinion is that, “This race looks almost like ‘No winners: only losers and survivors.'” Our anonymous prognosticator points out that “If Windy is halfway accurate, it just might be a steroidal sleigh ride coming home. Y’know, the kind where the boat gets going so fast the knotmeter comes out of the water. Getting out looks manageable. Possibly the slower boats might get some bashing when the wind picks up.”

The Bluewater Bash is literally a race to nowhere. Competitors will sail out the Gate to longitude 124, turn around, and sail back to the start/finish line off the St. Francis Yacht Club. The theoretical course distance is 150 miles.

Waves are expected to reach 8 feet around midnight, building to 14 feet at about noon on Saturday.

The 27 entries (with 119 sailors aboard) are all carrying YellowBrick transponders. Many of them are doing their qualifier and/or crew training for the Pacific Cup, which will start the week of the Fourth of July. But the race committee has postponed the Doublehanded 2 and PHRF 4 divisions (the slower boats) until further notice, bringing the number of boats (potentially) starting today to 20. Each crewmember who completes the race will receive a certificate and a medal.

This inaugural edition honors the late Jocelyn Nash. Among Jocelyn’s other accomplishments, she and her partner Joe Guthrie survived the deadly Doublehanded Farallones Race of 1982 aboard her Hawkfarm El Gavilan by staying offshore all night in the storm, rather than trying to make it back through the Gate. To read reports from that ill-fated event, see the May 1982 issue of Latitude 38:

• • Doublehanded Farallones Feature
  • Kuhushan Sinking
  • Going For It Once Too Often