Golden Gate YC’s Seaweed Soup in San Francisco
It’s an old cliché, but each year we anticipate the arrival of March with curiosity — will it really come in like a lion? The answer on Saturday, March 1, this year was, “Yeah, like, duh, fer sure!” A storm front was on its way, pushing westerly wind into the 30-knot range ahead of it, far exceeding the forecast for mid-teens. (We clocked a gust of 35 knots west of Angel Island.)
Most of Golden Gate Yacht Club’s Seaweed Soup racers did show up for the last race of the midwinter series on the San Francisco Cityfront. During the windy race on choppy waves, we counted at least one each of the following: a spinnaker boat that chose not to fly a spinnaker; a bald-headed drop (at the Knox buoy west of Angel Island); a set of twings broken; an exploded spinnaker; and a round-up to auto-tack perilously close to the Little Harding buoy.
Despite the westerly wind direction, Gordie Nash of Arcadia observed that it wasn’t a topographical wind, but more of a regional weather pattern, so it was not your typical San Francisco summer weather.
Although some boats dropped out in the intense conditions, others soldiered on. Among the finishers was Scott Easom’s Sabre Spirit Serenade, which would be declared the overall series winner for a second year in a row.
Comparing this year to last year, Scott said their crew enjoyed the better weather this year, with all five races completed. Serenade was able to finish all of them, even the really light ones, “which created the throwout, which helped us because we had one bad race,” said Scott. “In the third one, we had a fourth. One of our guys didn’t show up and I had to do the bow. That didn’t go very well.”
Scott’s late uncle, Hank Easom, loved this series. “I think Hank’s name’s up there more than anybody’s. That’s why I continue to do it.”