Three Bridge Fiasco — The Marks Get Their Way
The Singlehanded Sailing Society’s Three Bridge Fiasco could have as easily been titled “Crap Shoot.”
Andy Schwenk, who sailed his Covey Island schooner Sir Edmund, described the lead-up to the race: “All week long, talk on the docks was, ‘This one’s gonna be different; this year we’ll have wind. It will be fun,’ they said. ‘Everyone will have a chance,’ they said. Well none of that was true; as the day drew near, the weather forecast for breeze on race day disappeared like the 49ers’ playoff chances.”
An ebb current dominated the scene on Saturday, January 25. What didn’t dominate was the breeze. During the Cityfront starts that morning, it switched around between a meek easterly and a mild northerly. A westerly filled in by lunchtime but didn’t make it all the way to the farthest mark, Red Rock in the North Bay. The 328 entries, they were dropping like flies. Some were never even able to make a clean start. Others crossed the restricted start line multiple times, incurring 20-minute penalties. Nevertheless, 41 boats were actually able to finish the theoretically 21-mile course ahead of the 7 p.m. time limit.
A Brief Three Bridge Fiasco Intro
The SSS puts on this most challenging in-the-Bay race for singlehanders and doublehanders. The starts and finishes use Golden Gate Yacht Club in the San Francisco Marina. It’s chaotic for the racers and stressful for the race committee.
The slowest boats start at 9 a.m., and each PHRF or BAMA rating has a different start time, from slowest to fastest. The sailors can cross the start line in either direction, take the three marks (Blackaller Buoy east of the South Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge; Yerba Buena/Treasure Island, bisecting the Bay Bridge; and Red Rock, just south of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge) in any order, and round them in any direction.
J/125s Are on a Three-peat
The first-to-finish boat the past two years was a J/125, Rufless. This year Rufless finished fourth in division, but another J/125, Arsenal, led the way across the finish line.
“We had a fun Three Bridge Fiasco,” commented Arsenal‘s skipper, Andrew Picel, who sailed with crew Leland Hubble. Arsenal finished at 4:07 p.m. but incurred a 20-minute penalty for a start line violation.
“Heading out to the race course, we had a plan in mind, but that quickly changed due to the lack of breeze. It was glass starting toward Treasure Island, so we decided our best chance was to start with the ebb and at least get moving away from the start line.” The duo rounded their first mark, Blackaller Buoy, then quickly ended up under the Golden Gate Bridge, drifting out to sea.