Four Out of 360

Four out of 360 — that’s how many boats finished Saturday’s Three Bridge Fiasco pursuit race. Congratulations to John Gray and Matt Van Rensselaer on the mighty Moore 24 Immoral, who finished first at 5:25 p.m.; Christopher Harvey and Dan Mone on Mojo at 5:40 and Mark Zimmer and Mark Lewis on Khimaira at 5:43 (F-25c trimarans); and the final finishers, Will Paxton and Zachery Anderson on the Express 27 Motorcycle Irene at 6:22. The deadline to finish was 7 p.m.

The challenge was to complete a Bay tour with no wind and lots of ebb, the latter of which swept scores of boats out the Gate, while dozens more anchored along Crissy Field and the piers, lining the San Francisco shore like a string of pearls. Many sailors might have wished for a do-over on Sunday — the day was bright and sunny and the ebb was still powerful, but a puffy northeasterly would no doubt have whisked substantially more boats around the 21-mile course.

The Three Bridge Fiasco kicked off the 2018 season for the Singlehanded Sailing Society (with divisions for doublehanders too) including several Bay and ocean races, the pinnacle of which will be June’s Singlehanded TransPac to Hanalei Bay in Kauai (no doublehanders allowed). See www.sfbaysss.org for the complete schedule.

We’ll have much more on the Three Bridge Fiasco in the March issue of Latitude 38; we plan to find out from the finishers how they achieved this seemingly impossible feat.