THIS HOLIDAY SEASON, WE CELEBRATE more than just being one of the best protected marinas on the San Francisco Bay — we celebrate the community that makes Grand Marina truly special.
With first-class service, quality amenities, and a full-service marina center staffed by certified craftsmen, we’re here to keep your boating experience joyful all year long.
From all of us at Grand Marina, may your holidays be filled with peace, joy, and time with the ones you cherish most. Grand Marina — the best on the Bay, and the heart of our holiday community.
F Prime deep water double-fingered concrete slips from 30' to 100'.
F Guest berthing available for a weekend or any day getaway.
F Complete bathroom and shower facility, heated and tiled.
F Free pump-out station open 24/7.
F Full-service Marine Center and haul-out facility.
F Free parking.
F Free on-site WiFi. And much more...
Directory of Grand Marina Tenants
CUTTING GUN
RUBICON YACHTS
(3) 42' AquaLodge
55’
$144,000
47’
$349,000
$155,000
$34,500
Houseboats 2020 - $115,000 ea. Mark Miner (415) 290-1347
$549,000
42’ HUNTER 426 DECK SALON, 2003
$149,000 Emery Cove (510) 601-5010
37’ TAYANA 37, 1978
$75,000 Emery Cove (510) 601-5010
$50,000
838-1800 $55,000
Cove (510) 601-5010
Thoughtfully designed and beautifully finished inside and out, the Aqua Lodge features fiberglass pontoons, a wood-beamed lofted ceiling, a fully appointed galley, and a full bath with residential-sized fixtures. The main salon is open and bright, while the master stateroom features a panoramic water view and a private deck. With the cost of building on the waterfront ever increasing, the Aqua Lodge is an affordable alternative. We currently have three (3) identical Floating Cottages available at $115,000. each. These are new houseboats that have never been used. With the acquisition of all three one could start a unique Air B&B type business in a nice location.
JEANNEAU SUN ODYSSEY 349, 2021 $209,000
NOTE: There is no propulsion included. An outboard engine could be installed on the bracket but, these boats are not equipped with any propulsion. They would need to be towed or trucked to their destination.
50’ AAGE NIELSON YAWL, 1956
$159,000 Emery Cove (510) 601-5010
(510)
33’ J BOATS J/100 “EIGHT BALL”, 2005
RUBICON YACHTS
$115,000
47’
$94,000
40’ PACIFIC SEACRAFT, 1999
$299,000 Alameda (510) 838-1800
31’ CORSAIR F-31, 1996
Thoughtfully designed and beautifully finished inside and out, the Aqua Lodge features fiberglass pontoons, a wood-beamed lofted ceiling, a fully appointed galley, and a full bath with residential-sized fixtures. The main salon is open and bright, while the master stateroom features a panoramic water view and a private deck. With the cost of building on the waterfront ever increasing, the Aqua Lodge is an affordable alternative. We currently have three (3) identical Floating Cottages available at $115,000. each. These are new houseboats that have never been used. With the acquisition of all three one could start a unique Air B&B type business in a nice location.
$150,000 Emery Cove (510) 601-5010
$69,750 Alameda (510) 838-1800
RUBICON YACHTS
$39,000
Cove (510) 601-5010
NOTE: There is no propulsion included. An outboard engine could be installed on the bracket but, these boats are not equipped with any propulsion. They would need to be towed or trucked to their destination.
CONSIDERING THE DARK SIDE?
Thoughtfully designed and beautifully finished inside and out, the Aqua Lodge features fiberglass pontoons, a wood-beamed lofted ceiling, a fully appointed galley, and a full bath with residential-sized fixtures. The main salon is open and bright, while the master stateroom features a panoramic water view and a private deck. With the cost of building on the waterfront ever increasing, the Aqua Lodge is an affordable alternative. We currently have three (3) identical Floating Cottages available at $115,000. each. These are new houseboats that have never been used. With the acquisition of all three one could start a unique Air B&B type business in a nice location.
NOTE: There is no propulsion included. An outboard engine could be installed on the bracket but, these boats are not equipped with any propulsion. They would need to be towed or trucked to their destination.
Bittersweet is a Chuck Paine designed Able Apogee 50 that shows high quality craftsmanship, true pride of ownership, and bluewater capability throughout. Built by Able Marine in Maine, the Apogee 50 combines performance, strength, and timeless beauty. With her powerful rig, balanced hull form, deep n keel, and water ballast, she’s capable of crossing oceans swiftly and safely, while o ering the comfort and elegance that experienced sailors appreciate. The Apogee 50 was conceived as a performance cruiser with the heart of a racer and the soul of a passagemaker. Bittersweet carries that spirit with a warm, inviting interior, robust o shore systems, and a deck layout optimized for shorthanded sailing. She has received a high level of care, which shows in her shiny hull, deck and spars; clear portlights and hatch lenses; and a re nished interior that is in beautiful condition. Her sail handling systems have been updated and operate well, including recent Harken deck hardware. A full Victron energy package including lithium batteries has been installed, as well as a new suite of electronics.
As a factory certified Hempel paint applicator, Svendsen’s Bay Marine delivers the latest among antifouling technology — Hempel’s Silic One has been reformulated for exceptional durability and smoother finishes. Fewer coats, less drag, and maximum longevity ultimately mean lower costs and less downtime for you.
CALENDAR
Non-Race
Dec. 4 — Clean Boating Network Meeting, via Zoom, noon2:15 p.m. Topics: Marine Mammal Center, CA Boater Card, Golden Mussels, Clean Waterways. Free, but preregister. Info, https://tinyurl.com/5fuepzye
Dec. 4 — Full Cold Moon on a Thursday.
Dec. 5 — Youth Boat Launch, S.F. Maritime National Historical Park, 1 p.m. Launch of youth-built Port Orford cedar skiff. Info, https://maritime.org/education.
Dec. 7-28 — Keelboat Sailing, South Beach Harbor, San Francisco, noon-5 p.m. Sundays, weather permitting. Free, but preregister. BAADS, www.baads.org/sailing .
Dec. 11 — Winter Open House, Spaulding Marine Center, Sausalito, 5-9 p.m. Food & drinks, arts & crafts, live music from the Dirt Farm Duo. Info, www.spauldingcenter.org.
Dec. 11 — Single Sailors Association Mixer, Bar Caesar, Oakland (tentative), 5-9 p.m. Info, www.singlesailors.org.
Dec. 12 — Holiday Event, San Francisco Marina, 4-8 p.m. Live music, trackless train rides, lighted boat parade, more. Info, recsfmarina@sfgov.org or (415) 831-6322.
Dec. 12 — Lighted Boat Parade, Coyote Point YC, San Mateo, 5:30 p.m. Holiday treats, special guest arriving by boat. Cathy, (650) 464-6265.
Dec. 12 — 50th Holiday Boat Parade of Lights, Dana Point, 6:30-8 p.m. Theme: Golden Jubilee/Carol of the Boats. Info, https://danapointharbor.com/events.
Dec. 13 — Lighted Boat Parade, Point Richmond. RYC, www.richmondyc.org.
Dec. 13 — Lighted Boat Parade, San Rafael Canal, 6 p.m.
Dec. 13 — Lighted Boat Parade, Petaluma. 5:30 p.m. Petaluma Marina to the Turning Basin. Petaluma YC, www. petalumayachtclub.com.
Dec. 13 — Holiday Boat Parade & Light Show, Marina del Rey, 4-8 p.m. Theme: A Nightmare Before Christmas. Info, www.mdrboatparade.org.
Dec. 13 — Winterfest, Gabrielson Park, Sausalito. Lighted boat parade starts at 6 p.m., followed by fireworks at 7:15 p.m. Info, www.winterfestsausalito.com.
CALENDAR
Dec. 14 — Hanukkah begins at sunset.
Dec. 14, 21 — Parade of Lights, San Diego Bay, 5:30-7:40 p.m. Shelter Island to Coronado. Theme: An Out of This World Christmas. Info, www.sdparadeoflights.org.
BERKELEY YC — Midwinters, separate Saturday and Sunday series: 12/13, 12/14, 1/10, 1/11, 2/14, 2/15, 3/1 (Champion of Champions). Chowder Races: every Sunday through March except when it conflicts with the Midwinters. Info, www.berkeleyyc.org.
CAL SAILING CLUB — Sunday morning dinghy races, year round, intraclub only. Info, www.cal-sailing.org.
CORINTHIAN YC — Midwinters: 1/17-18 and 2/21-22. Info, www.cyc.org.
SANTA CRUZ YC — Midwinters: 12/20, 1/17, 2/21, 3/21. Winter Tuesday Afternoons through 3/3. Info, www.scyc.org.
SAUSALITO YC — Chili Midwinters: 12/7, 1/4, 2/1, 3/1. RegattaPRO Winter One Design: 12/13, 1/10, 2/14. Info,
The FinesT sails Begin
Our patented woven Vectran® sailcloth performs like the laminates with the durability of Dacron®, especially in roller furling applications. In fact, Vectran® is lighter, lower stretch, and retains its shape over a longer life than any sailcloth we've ever offered to cruising sailors. That's because Hood Vectran® is woven, not laminated to Mylar ® film. And you can be sure that each sail we roll out is built by hand, with the same care and craftsmanship that has been the Hood hallmark for 50 years. To discuss your sailcloth needs – whether our state-of-the-art Vectran ® or our soft, tight-weave Dacron® – give us a call today.
New Sails
Sail Repairs: anybrand
Furling Cover Replacements
Pickup and Delivery
Outbound 46 with Hood Vektron Full Batten Mainsail, 140% Genoa, and Solent Jib
YACHT RACING ASSOCIATION — Doublehanded Midwinters: 12/7, 1/11, 2/8. Info, www.yra.org or www.jibeset.net.
Islander (cruise ready) $75,000 37' Fisher Pilothouse Ketch 1977 $54,900 Visit www.yatco.com/company/napa-valley-1220 for more information
CALL FOR RESERVATIONS
• We are uniquely positioned to haul your boat
• We carefully haul you on our Brownell Hydraulic trailer. NO STRAPS!
• We safely store your boat on Brownell boat stands supplied by us!
• We have some of the best weather for drying out your boat.
• We have seasoned professionals that can field your calls or work on your boat.
• We have a safe environment for your boat.
• We have very reasonable rates Come visit us – let's talk!
Please send your calendar items by the 10th of the month to calendar@latitude38.com. Please, no phone-ins! Calendar listings are for marine-related events that are free or don't cost much to attend. The Calendar is not meant to support commercial enterprises.
December Weekend Tides
Predictions for Station 9414290, San Francisco (Golden Gate) date/day time/ht. time/ht. time/ht. time/ht.
December Weekend Currents
NOAA Predictions for .88 NM NE of the Golden Gate Bridge
⇑⇓ CRUISING MY SCOW-BOW, JUNK-RIGGED DREAM BOAT AND CONTEMPLATING THE POINT OF THE POINTY END
We are in Fiji, and I have had lots of people come by the boat asking if it sails. "How bad is it upwind?" they ask, among other things you can imagine.
From my point of view (6,000 miles in varied conditions and directions), I can now point to some great top speeds: 13.8, California to French Polynesia, and 11.8 French Polynesia to Fiji, good day average, 138 miles and 1,500 over two weeks. I've developed a general impression that makes me ask the question, "Where, when and why did the point on the front of the boat come from?" Your contributor, Max Ebb, would probably be better to cover this.
As for me, I think bows were generally quite bluff, rounded and even a square scow type … until when? At what point did men add longish poles to the front of the boat to get more sail area? (Never seen in China, though.)
Then at some point, Western man made hulls with fairings that imitated bowsprits, even going to the extreme of putting bowsprits on the end of those points. Go figure.
Over a hundred years or so, designers made attempt after attempt to make those pointy fronts more effective. They put flare on them, hollowed them a bit, and made them sharper, plumb, or worse — with slab sides designed to scoop huge amounts of water up on the deck when heeled and going at speed.
Along comes some wonderful, creative French guy who revolutionized the Mini Transat fleet, and now the sailing world is confused. Such a paradigm shift in thinking challenges the "different but the same" group and risks the devaluation of every pointy-front race boat, thus justifying the banning of the shape in many classes immediately following the ban in the minis. I see Class 40s now that get around the pointy-front rule by having a tiny angle at the deck, but the rubber that hits the road is getting scowier and scowier. Jim Antrim now has a very interesting scow-bow catamaran that could change that world of thinking, too.
All I know is that our version has a shape that is pretty dreamy to sail and is exceptional in light wind, even maintaining hull speed equal to true wind in under four knots.
The radically unique 'Rosie G', with its signature scow bow — which has been something of a revelation to the vessel's designer, the legendary Jim Antrim — was completed at Berkeley Marine Center about three years ago.
Electric Propulsion
LETTERS
(The boat requires an autopilot because the Hydrovane has no apparent to make it work.) When sailing upwind, we do slow her down in big seas — even though no green water comes aboard — just to stop the noise and vibration. We make good angles, and have few complaints but for the normal motion in big beam seas.
Not much to do about that. Probably worse on a cat.
Anyway, I figure this could stir up an interesting chat from Max, or your readers. The world of sailing needs some change. Everything is still the same and it's time to shake the barrel. Aloha.
⇑⇓ JIM ANTRIM ASKED PAUL KAMEN THE FOLLOWING:
Paul — What looked "too heavy" about the Rosie?
Jim Antrim East Bay
Jim — The volume below the waterline. My eyeball suggested that it would be difficult to keep the pram bow from slamming into waves when going upwind. Maybe that's why they call it "beating." But the objective value of a design is the owner's satisfaction, so I have to say that the Rosie G design is a success.
I don't know nearly enough about it to speak with any authority. It seems like a fertile area for research, though, and I wonder if it will ever be a racing solution for windward-leeward courses — especially for classes that don't have a rule limiting LOA.
Long-distance and even round-the-world racing is mostly reaching and running. So is cruising along popular routes. But a lot of my sailing is not Point A to Point B, it's Point A and back to Point A.
Did you take any measurements to construct upwind polars? Intuitively, it seems as if the wave-eating bow turbulence would come at the cost of stagnation pressure pushing aft, but I'm open to correction based on actual data.
Max Ebb Latitude Nation
Paul — Your comment about beating is funny, and I
Barry Spanier
Rosie G, Custom Antrim Sloop Planet Ocean
LETTERS
bet you're actually correct about the origin of the word. For many years I have said, "If it weren't for waves, all boats would be scows."
The point of the point is to cut through waves when sailing upwind. Hence, when I started to design Rosie G I told Barry, "The scow bow will be great reaching and running, but it will suck upwind." He replied, "Well, if it's upwind, I can stay in the harbor."
However, Rosie G has been a revelation to me. The bow works amazingly well, even upwind. It pushes up a foamy bow wave, which seems to absorb and suck the energy out of approaching waves. Together, they seem to roll together into a bubbly layer that slides under the boat and comes out the stern as a nice, flat wake. I sailed on her several times in the Bay before the delivery trip to Santa Barbara, and Barry is not exaggerating.
It is astonishingly dry.
I bet collectively in all that time, we had less spray land on the bow than it would take to fill a teacup.
I'll admit that we never went upwind against anything bigger than a two- or three-foot chop, but there was never a sense that the chop slowed us at all. I still think it would suck going upwind against a six- to eight-foot cresting sea, but I'm confident you could fall off enough to make it sail fine and still make weather.
As a cruising solution, the scow bow is fabulous. If asked a few years ago what kind of cruising boat I would design for myself, I'd have a hard time picking between a catamaran or a monohull and probably go for a cat. Today, I'd pick a scow-bowed monohull. As a racing solution, the Class40s have shown the scow is a clear winner for the type of oceanoriented racing they do. If asked to pick a pointy or scow monohull for a classic Farallones race, that would depend on the conditions of the day, though I would always want the scow for the second half.
PS: Another reason boats have historically had pointed bows is ease of construction. Planks and plates don't easily wrap into a round bow configuration. I had to figure out a different way to build the bow end of the hull plug for Rosie G
Jim Antrim
⇑⇓ ADVERTISING A FUN REGATTA WITH LATITUDE
I've been wanting to get more people involved with the ElkYC Dias de los Dinghies Regatta, which has been happening for the past five years and is a fun sailing event that the same sailors keep coming back to. It was time, in true Halloween fashion, to search out ways to get new blood.
The first thing we did was start early. With two months to go, we sent an email to Latitude 38 and hoped it would be posted in their monthly Calendar, which, sure enough, it was. (Look on page 16 in the October issue.) You will see Dias de los Dinghies advertised for the first time there. It was great to get published.
'Rosie G's blunt bow takes shape in the early 2020s.
LETTERS
With one month to go, we tried something else new for us: going to the various community Facebook class meetups, we sent them a Notice of Race. Since our regatta is open to sailboats 14-ft and under, the NOR was posted on the Laser fleet page, El Toro, Lido 14, Fatty Knees and Walker Bay. We could not find a page for the Jester, though we have two that usually show up.
We also did our usual advertising and printed out about 90 index-card-sized NORs and posted them on message boards around Santa Cruz and Moss Landing harbors. Index-card size was chosen because anything bigger takes up too much space.
Another new item for this year was targeting urinals in men's bathrooms, where you can get sailors' undivided attention. We posted these at Santa Cruz Yacht Club, Brady's Yacht Club (in Santa Cruz), and Elkhorn Yacht Club.
Advertising is a lot like fishing: you don't know what you'll catch till you drop the hook. We'll keep you posted if our new advertising was successful. www.elkhornyachtclub. org/event-details/eyc-dia-de-los-dinghies-regatta
Mark Pastick Moss Landing
⇑⇓ OCS? UFD? GETTING INTO SOME RACING- (AND SPECIFICALLY STARTING-) RULES NUANCES
Latitude — You did a very nice write-up of the Joe Logan Regatta and Travel Trophy final results. Thank you.
However, a small detail but relevant for the future needs to be mentioned. The three over-early boats in the last race were not scored OCS. They were scored UFD. The start was under a U flag, not P. The difference is that there is no recovery from an over-early under a U flag and no restart allowed unless the whole race is restarted for some reason. While a couple of boats returned to the start line to restart, that attempt doesn't count. Look up U flag start Rule 30.3.
Tony Chargin CRO for the 2025 Joe Logan
⇑⇓ GETTING INTO SOME COLLEGE-SAILING DETAILS
What one-design boat is involved in this contest?
Robert Peterson
was commenting on the
Robert
October 15 'Lectronic Latitude: Stanford Sailing Wins Women's ACCs in Boston. The Cardinal recorded six bullets in 28 races between A and B divisions in breezy conditions in New England.
Robert — The dinghy portion of college sailing is almost exclusively in FJs or Z420s. Most schools have one fleet of each and send A division in one fleet and B in the other — then have them switch on day two of a regatta. There's some singlehanded college sailing in ILCAs (Lasers), and a few schools (Tufts and Salve Regina) randomly have Larks. — Fritz Baldauf, Latitude Racing Editor
⇑⇓ WE CONCLUDE OUR REMEMBRANCE OF ROBERT REDFORD AND A DISCUSSION ABOUT HIS UNPOPULARAMONG-SAILORS FILM, ALL IS LOST
We all love Robert Redford, but this movie could easily have ended up on Mystery Science Theater 3000! The film started taking on water not long after the opening credits. Did anyone notice that the flooding in the cabin was high enough in one scene to sink the vessel, then the water was much lower in the following scene? And this was around the time he decided to take a nap, something that my 95-yearold aunt with severe macular degeneration noticed!
And what's with trying to make a small epoxy patch on the inside after a large hull incursion? Hasn't anyone heard of polysulfide that cures under water? How about several automatic bilge pumps? And a well-supplied ditch bag? And an auto-deploy offshore liferaft? And sealed emergency food rations? Or a $169 handheld/waterproof satellite transponder? Or forward-looking sonar, a satellite phone, a wetsuit, snorkel and some fins … maybe a sea anchor so that a solo pilot could safely get some sleep? It's not like it was a bluewater crossing or anything, just a short daysail, right?
And all for the sake of drama?
Let's be prepared out there, folks. I have more back-up plans at dockside.
Mark Mihelich
One of the biggest critiques of Robert Redford's 'All Is Lost' is that he wraps a winch counterclockwise, an error so egregious that many sailors dismissed the movie from that point on. (Other sailors, such as Mark, have a long, long list.) Please note the winches on overall RBBS winner 'Zeus'. In fact, many top race boats, going back to 12-Meters, use "wrong-way" wrapped winches. (With that said, the winch on the Cal 39 was likely wrapped the wrong way.) Take that, haters!
Mark — We did not notice what were likely a gazillion inconsistencies in the 2013 film All Is Lost, starring Robert Redford. We do have strong opinions about the film (please see the July 2021 'Lectronic Latitude: 'All Is Lost' Is All but Universally Despised by Sailors), but those feelings have changed, a little, after the outpouring of comments that flood-
LETTERS
ed our Facebook page and were featured in the November issue's Letters. Our readers made thoughtful arguments in support of All Is Lost and poo-pooed the idea that the film needed to be flawlessly accurate in its portrayal of sailing. The story of Redford's character — who seemed incompetent and guilt ridden — was greater than the sum of its representation of seamanship. Our readers wondered instead what might have compelled "Our Man" to go to sea and argued that his vague past only deepened the mystery and made the story that much more compelling.
Here's an excerpt of Redford's opening monologue, the only lines of dialogue — excluding expletives and grunts — in the movie:
"I'm sorry. It's inexcusable, really. I know that now. How it could have taken this long to admit that, I'm not sure. But it did. I tried, I think you would all agree that I tried. To be true, to be strong, to be kind, to love, to be right. But I wasn't.
"All is lost here, except for soul and body — that is, what's left of them."
⇑⇓ WE WERE COMPLACENT AND WE LEARNED
For the sailor, the main point of the movie is that even the most experienced sailor doesn't know it all and can become complacent to the point of their demise.
Every rookie sailor should have to watch All Is Lost over and over until they finally get it and shut up about the character's sailing errors. The experienced sailor has to constantly review their procedures and practices from a "what if?" perspective — and constantly challenge whether complacency might be putting them, their boat, their crew and others in the boating community at unnecessary risk.
Example: One of our rules is that every night, before retiring, the boat has to be ready to get underway at a moment's notice.
Early in our sailing career, we enjoyed a fun day of swimming, snorkeling and playing in the water, and left the boat in a bit of a disheveled state. Around 2 a.m., we awoke to a no-warning squall that put the boat in a precarious position should we drag. We fumbled and stumbled all over the toys left out, in the driving rain and pitch black, to get unanchored and the heck out of there.
Never again.
In the many, many years and thousands of miles ever since, everything gets put away in its designated spot after the sunset conch horn blows; the dinghy gets raised in the davits and secured. Of the thousands of times we have done this, there were only maybe three or four times where we had to exit promptly. In every case, had the boat not been ready to go in an instant, bad things may have happened.
I think the problem is that most rookie sailboat owners
Robert Redford, seen here in 2012, was 77 when 'All Is Lost' premiered in October 2013. Redford suffered significant hearing loss after being bombarded with water during filming.
LETTERS
fancy themselves as old salts, and attempt(ed) to display their expertise by tearing down inconsequential moments in the movie. The main message was, "Regardless how skilled the sailor, complacency can creep in and kill." An important message that some missed completely while trying to nitpick the minutiae.
It is all too easy to become complacent. The real sailor knows it, recognizes it, looks for it and avoids it at all costs, so that in the end, All is NOT Lost.
Rod Brandon
⇑⇓
ALL THE THINGS THAT CAN GET YOU
That film just didn't appeal to the masses. There were no explosions, violence, or romance. I did find it to be a good handbook on how to approach problems — and overloaded container ships are a hazard. A fisherman told me of a vessel that went down like a rock in the night. They didn't know what it was. Thankfully they were rescued. The Coast Guard said there were two unaccountedfor overboard containers in the area.
While crossing the Bay of Fundy, I saw a huge tree in the distance, roots and all, floating. On the way back, I passed a floating wooden dock with the usual steel corners. I regret not reporting it.
I doubt the Coast Guard retrieves such things, however, as they would be impossible to find in a 40-mile expanse.
At any rate, it does scare the crap out of me to think that I've sailed those same waters at night.
JC Brown
JC — We support reporting hazards! The Coast Guard might alert nearby assets, such as the Army Corps of Engineers here in the Bay, who have purpose-built vessels that can pluck something such as a big tree out of the water. Or the Coast Guard can issue a Notice to Mariners.
⇑⇓ ALL THE TECHNOLOGY
Containers do fall off ships. Some sink, and some float like an iceberg. Without forward-facing sonar, how does any sailor know what's ahead in the water, especially if object(s) are too low to be picked up by radar?
I believe the point of story is that no matter how well your ducks are lined up, unexpected things can go wrong. In the '60s, cargo vessels would show up in Europe with mast, rigging and wreckage from sailing yachts run down in the dark stuck on their bows.
Peter Blumberg
As we said last month, Fair winds and following, captain Redford. Thank you for a lifetime of great movies. (Under the title it says, "Never Give Up.")
LETTERS
Peter — Is that really true? That sounds excessive!
⇑⇓ THIS COMMENT IS FROM 2021:
Guys! Before you call this movie stupid: This is not a sailing movie. Think about it. It's about man's life. Any man's life. You wake up one morning to discover that your boat (job, family, relationship, health, etc.) is sinking. You do what you have to do, but more is coming. Nobody hears you. (Broken radio is a metaphor, guys.) Society ignores you, even when you are right there screaming for help. (The passing containership is a metaphor, guys!) And when all is lost, it takes another human being, a stranger, who reaches down to you and saves your life.
Now tell me this has never happened to you.
Giorgi Muchaidze
⇑⇓ AN ODE TO LOST SCHOONERS
I sailed on Raindancer back in 1988 for about a month, and it was the greatest experience of my life. I made wonderful friendships and memories.
I was sorry to learn of the boat's demise.
Jason Kunt
Jason was commenting on the March 2013 'Lectronic: The Loss of the Schooner 'Raindancer'.
⇑⇓ A SHAME TO END AS SHE DID
I was captain of Vadura from 1964-1965 before she was sold to Mr. Leclery from France and Palma de Mallorca, then sailed by Christian Jonville to Tahiti. She was an immensely beautiful yacht. What a shame to end as she did.
Ove Hamstrup
Ove was commenting on the February 2024 'LL: Richardson Bay's Iconic Wooden Yacht 'Vadura' Demolished.
⇑⇓ BON VOYAGE, 'KA'IULANI'
Aloha. I am the granddaughter of the late Captain Russell Kneeland (niece of Eamonn Kneeland, who commented on this story). I've been fortunate to sail Ka'iulani in S.F. and have been searching for her new owners.
schooner 'Ka'iulani' had what one Latitude writer
LETTERS
My business, Kneeland Co., is named after my grandfather, and I would be so thrilled to be able to connect with someone who might have information on her whereabouts. I did some research for Maryland but couldn't seem to find anything. Thank you!
Joanna
Williams
Hi Joanna — I'm currently at Cape Charles Yacht Center, a boatyard in Cape Charles, Virginia, and [Ka'iulani] is here, on the hard. I don't know anything about who owns her, but she looks good, her rigging is up, and her sails are bent on.
Anne Henningfeld
Joanna and Anne were commenting on the April 2012 'Lectronic Latitude with the same name as this letter. After more than a decade plying the Bay as a charter schooner, educational vessel, then as a private yacht, Ka'iulani finally headed to the South Pacific in what was slated to be a yearlong excursion.
The boat is apparently now on the East Coast. Check out the website: www.schoonerkaiulani.com. Thank you, readers, for ending this schooner thread on a high note!
⇑⇓
KEEP THAT OLD HIGH NOTE ROLLIN'
I sailed on Alaska Eagle on a leg from Easter Island to Puerto Montt, Chile.
It was a great trip, but we sailed through a storm for three days with 40-50-knot winds and 30-foot seas. We had a great crew. Rich was the captain and Sherry was also very knowledgeable. Making matters worse, when we boarded at Easter Island, Rich told us the mast was broken. Fortunately there was an inner mast that allowed us to sail — but we couldn't use full sails.
Mike was commenting on the January 2014 'Lectronic Latitude: Share Your 'Alaska Eagle' Memories. Seen above, 'Alaska Eagle'.
Because of the storm, we arrived a couple of days early. I was looking for a leg in the Roaring Forties that would test me. Mission accomplished.
⇑⇓ WORDS MATTER
Mike Hessick
May I suggest a correction? [In the October 24 'Lectronic Latitude: Coast Guard Search and Rescue Specialist To Join Baja Ha-Ha Kick-Off Party.]
The Ha-Ha boat J/World was not "hit by a whale." As the linked article goes to some effort to clarify:
LETTERS
"This completely inaccurate information got passed along. In reality, J/World had been sailing comfortably at about nine knots under a small jib and reefed main when, at the top of swells, the crew began to notice some whales in the area. Suddenly, they found themselves heading down a wave on a nearly head-on course with a humpback whale. Russell says J/World first hit the whale with her keel, and it felt as though they had run aground. Almost immediately afterward, she felt contact between the boat's shaft and prop and the whale, resulting in blood in the water."
It would be more fair and accurate to say, "A Ha-Ha boat hit and injured a whale and sank about 180 miles south …" Eric
Eric — 100% Agree!
THANKS ALL AROUND
The Martin 16s are a great boat for adaptive sailing and ideal for sailing on San Diego Bay! Thank you, Challenged Sailors, for getting me out sailing again — for seven years now! What a change you've made in my life.
And thank you very much for writing about Challenged Sailors, Alex!
Peter M Phillips
Peter was commenting on the November 6 'LL: Challenged Sailors San Diego Overcomes Obstacles to Sailing.
Step aboard a Pacific fishing Step aboard a Pacific fishing vessel in the 1970s and vessel in the 1970s and experience the grit, danger, and experience the grit, danger, and camaraderie of life at sea. camaraderie of life at sea.
Step aboard a Pacific fishing vessel in the 1970s and experience the grit, danger, and camaraderie of life at sea.
⇑⇓ RAMMING SPEED, MATEYS
My wife and I were doublehanding our 38-ft sailboat from Walnut Grove to Richmond on Sunday, September 28.
Thankfully, reconstruction crews at the Rio Vista Bridge had the day off, thus no delay. The bridge tender indicated that work would be completed by March 2026.
It was an uneventful trip until the confluence of the San Joaquin and the Sacramento rivers at Pittsburg changed the dynamics. At that point, I was in the barrel of the Saint Francis Yacht Club's return race from Tinsley Island.
A Well MISSPENT Youth
A Well MISSPENT Youth
A bold new maritime memoir by Ben E. Neely
A bold new maritime memoir by Ben E. Neely
I was one of three smaller boats in the gun sights of large sport fishermen and heavy-displacement trawlers that took over the river. No regard was given to the tsunamis that would throw us on beam ends.
Para sailor Jim Thweat, right, in the 2022 Herb Meyer Cup, hosted by South Beach Yacht Club and the Bay Area Association of Disabled Sailors.
SCAN TO BUY SCAN TO BUY
LETTERS LETTERS
It is unlikely that anyone among them had taken the California Boater Card requirements seriously. There is nothing that can compare to the sight of two or three large powerboats close together at maximum warp on your stern.
"Move it or lose it" be their motto!
⇑⇓
GROUNDHOG DAY IN THE ESTUARY
John English Morgan 38
Oakland is especially bad, but everywhere we have urban dumping and storm drain pollution, with everything floating into our lovely S.F. Bay. Given the boat dumping problem in the Delta, not to mention other smaller embayments, maybe it's time that the state steps up?
There was once a Department of Boating and Waterways, but it mostly administered grants for docks — and it was eventually folded into the state parks and recreation department as a mere division. What we need is a state agency that can patrol and enforce dumping laws and remove vessels that the USCG and Army Corps won't touch because they are not deemed "navigational hazards."
Maybe like a CHP for the water?
Tom Gandesbery Treasure Island
Tom was commenting on the October 29 'Lectronic with the same name as this letter
⇑⇓ FUTURE DERELICTS
Is it safe to say that the anchored-out boats may be new to the Estuary? Is anyone documenting these problem boats? A count is nice, but from what I have seen, once a cleanup is done, another crop of derelict boats appears.
Just check boats for sale and see the number of ads showing up offering boats for free (or $1). I am seeing these types of ads increasing. Some may become the next derelict boat in the Estuary. Garbage and derelict boats require ongoing cleanups. The USCG does a great job, but does not have a 24/7 derelict-boat patrol — nor should they. Thanks for putting "affordable housing," in quotes. What is really needed is housing for people making less than
A recent photo from the Oakland Estuary. With the winter approaching, or having firmly arrived, scenes like this are likely to continue.
Mexico Winter Savings
LETTERS
$50,000 per year.
⇑⇓ A PAPER TRAIL? (NO WAY)
I'm curious why the owners of sunken boats can't be held responsible for their removal and disposal. Presumably, all these boats were once registered with the DMV and have title records. Finding the current owner should be easy, but what is the mechanism for holding them liable for the cleanup cost? Can someone shed some light on this question?
Jeff Adams
Jeff — I think the saying "you can't squeeze blood out of a turnip" is the answer to your question. The people responsible for these boats don't have money, that's why their boats are sinking.
James W Rife
⇑⇓ SYSTEMIC ISSUES
The only solution to crimes of poverty is to reduce poverty. All of these policing-based approaches at best move the problem around and at worst are literally killing the most vulnerable people in our society. All of these "Estuary activists" would be better served by advocating for higher taxes, public housing and a strong safety net.
Tommaso Nicholas Boggia
⇑⇓ THE MERRY-GO-ROUND METAPHOR
Cleaning it up gets old. Once cleaned, it just goes back to being a mess. Enforcement is needed! Living in Alameda for 30 years and being on the water almost weekly, I've seen this mess. The Corps clean it up, and it comes right back.
Chuck Wetteroth
⇑⇓
THE ICEBERG METAPHOR
These are just the wrecks you can see above water.
As bad as it is — and it is bad — it would be a lot worse without funding and staffing for the SAVE grant program for proper vessel disposal, preventing unloved boats in marinas from becoming "dollar boats" that wind up on the rocks or on the bottom. The final cash buyers of dollar boats almost never document/register and insure the boats, as required by law, over which the seller has no control. We see over and over how boats in the custody of people who can't/won't
Yet another boat recently sank off Ballena Bay in Alameda.
LETTERS
maintain them are not safe housing solutions, and sometimes are used in criminal activities.
The article heavily blames the USCG for not managing the mess in the Estuary, which is a misdirection; the CG has neither the statutory jurisdiction nor mandate to remove and dispose of these vessels.
If all state and local leaders are on the same page to get their agencies on task, the CG has frequently cooperated within its jurisdiction and capacity to make sweeps and cleanups safe and successful. If few or none of the local leadership want ownership of the difficult work, the feds will only go to the narrow limits of their authorities.
SAVE slowed the injection of future dollar boats, but by itself — and without political courage (and with fickle funding) — it's just a Band-Aid measure. Boats are still being abandoned. Meanwhile, cleanup of wrecks also requires political leadership in cities, counties, the state bureaucracy and federal government to cut red tape, find funding and contractors, and actually get them out of the waterways. If any leg of the stool is missing, nothing happens.
Kris Leverich Alameda
We thought we'd offer you respite from the current thread discussing derelict boat wrecks in the Oakland Estuary. "Hope you find the attached photo of value to your wonderful publication," wrote Pedro Rodriguez. "We were on the final leg of our delivery of 'Cortado', a classic 1985 Cape Dory 36, to its new home in Redwood City. Delivery included a surprisingly smooth rounding of Point Conception mid-afternoon."
Once a recreational vessel is docked or anchored, regardless of its legal disposition, it's mostly beyond the service's otherwise broad enforcement remit unless or until it produces a proven pollution event, sinks, or is abandoned in a location that directly impedes regular navigation, such as a marked channel. Nowhere in the US does the service have crane barges and crews cleaning up and disposing of derelicts. Nowhere in the US does the CG have the resources to regularly stake out illegal anchor-outs 24/7 for weeks and months on end, waiting for the owner/operator to hoist anchor and nail them for federal violations while underway. Currently, all of the anchor-outs are outside the security zone of the base, and the service does not enforce state and local laws governing boating and anchorages that vary from federal law. It certainly does not regulate local issues that merge into housing, addiction, mental health and civil disorder among the anchor-outs, which are endemic to homeless encampments ashore. No one at the base likes looking at the blight on the rocks and swinging with the tide on fraying anchor lines, but the problem is a 90% state, county, and city enforcement issue.
No local agency wants to be the "bad guy" in enforcing the law by itself without political leadership being ready to full-throatedly back them up when the bullhorn parade shows up to decry the sensible protection of the waterways over chaos and negligence. Sadly, in recent years, a number of county and municipal leaders have chosen to blast or shut down their own marine enforcement mechanisms when favoring outliers was politically rewarding, even promoting the anchor-out "lifestyle" without any understanding of its outsized hazards.
Several marine patrol units were defunded or disbanded. So when the problem "shockingly" accelerated, they didn't want to offend loud fringe constituencies by reversing course and doing the hard work their distant predecessors had done to have an orderly waterfront.
That was a choice, and it doesn't have to be that way.
Readers — We don't have a lot to add to this thread that we haven't said many, many times before in our own version of editorial Groundhog Day. Thanks, Kris Leverich, for your thorough and reasoned outline of what's going on in the Estuary. Is it really this hard to agree that it isn't safe for people to be living on old boats that sink and go ashore with complete regularity? We don't think it should be controversial to say: Clean up the Estuary right now, and keep it clean — period.
⇑⇓ A SHOUT-OUT?
I appreciate Alan Olson and Ken Neal's vision for Call of the Sea, but once in awhile, it would be nice to acknowledge the Bay Model and Army Corps of Engineers for their support of this program.
Not only is Sausalito's Bay Model home to Call of the Sea's 'Matthew Turner' and 'Seaward', it's also home to an education center that hosts a working hydraulic model of San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento/ San Joaquin River Delta system. Above, Kame Richards talks visitors through the Bay's currents and hydrological idiosyncracies.
Neither Seaward nor Matthew Turner has ever had to pay for docking. They have received free berthing all these years. That's a pretty significant contribution, I would think. Just saying.
Chris Gallagher Sausalito
PEDRO RODRIGUEZ
LETTERS
Chris was commenting on the October 3 'Lectronic Latitude: Schooner ‘Seaward': The Quiet Legacy Behind Call of the Sea. Thanks for giving credit where credit is due, Chris!
⇑⇓ ANOTHER SHOUT-OUT
Cinde Lou Delmas continues to be very generous with her beautiful Alerion 38. For the Great Pumpkin Regatta, we had five women over 70, and three that were over 80. On Sunday's Pursuit Race, we had a 6- and 8-year-old girls in fairly gnarly conditions. The girls loved it !
Milly Biller
Big Pink, International 110 Inverness
Milly was commenting on the October 31 'Lectronic: Help 'Latitude 38' Award the 2025 Wosser Trophies
⇑⇓ LIVE FROM THE 31ST BAJA HA-HA
We are approaching Turtle Bay. We are spending an extra day here and only one day in Santa Maria. We had some great winds this morning that have calmed down this afternoon. So far, all is well on board.
Craig Russell Aquarius, 40-ft Jeanneau Emeryville
Six-time Baja Ha-Ha Vet
⇑⇓ IT'S NOT JUST THE DESTINATION. IT'S THE PEOPLE
The Ha-Ha is EPIC!
With Richard Spindler, Chuck Skewes and Paul Kamen on board, the stories, the really good stories, never end. It's pretty amazing how much these guys have done and know. I was on watch with Chuck last night, and I've never seen anyone dial in the sails like he does — quickly and quietly with zero drama or concern, always cool and collected. Kamen has done something like 28 Transpacs, and he's pretty quiet about his adventures until you ask him. Richard still remembers every boat and every story he's ever written about the Ha-Ha. That's unreal.
If you haven't read through the bios, you should. It's rich with quotes, stories and Richardisms. The rest of these characters are equally enamoring. It's a happy ship.
Mitch Perkins Former Latituder On board Profligate
⇑⇓ THE GRAND POOBAH SAYS THAT WHEN YOU'RE IN MEXICO, YOU SHOULD HEAD TO SAILFEST IN ZIHUATANEJO
I totally agree, Richard [Spindler].
Swan Fun has participated the last couple of years, and look forward to it again this season. Sailfest is a well-organized event, the bay is beautiful, and the town of Zihuatanejo charming.
They have had to work through some calendar conflicts with another regatta charity in Barra, but with some adjustments, it should be easier to transition between these two super stops!
Joe Heinzmann Swan Fun, Swan 55
⇑⇓ SPEAKING OF GROUNDHOG DAY
There's some chatter flying around that this might be the Poobah's last Ha-Ha. Any truth to those rumors?
Asking for a friend.
Orlando Duran
Orlando — We'd like to think that it's way more than chatter at this point. We've been getting this question regularly for the past year now. (Actually, the speculation started last year during Baja Ha-Ha XXX, which was supposed to be the last one.) The current "chatter," which as of this writing is by no means confirmed, is that there will be a 32nd Baja Ha-Ha with a new organization in place.
But you didn't hear that from us.
Have a comment? Email us at editorial@latitude38.com
This year's Baja Ha-Ha corresponded with a waxing moon going full during the week-plus-long cruiser's rally. This photo, taken from the mothership 'Profligate', is from the first few days out of San Diego.
The Zihuatanejo Sailfest also means a swimfest and all-around funfest.
LOOSE LIPS
November’s Caption Contest(!) was more than a little hot air. Have any of our readers tried this?
Winner and top 10 comments below.
"I tried burritos. I tried cabbage. I tried canned hominy. Had to go with petroleum until the sea breeze returns!" — Richard vonEhrenkrook.
"Is this the 'ultimate' in sail training?" — Scott Henry.
"While filming All is Lost with Robert Redford, Mr. Redford kept asking the special effects guy if he thought that this was 'overkill,' while retrieving his hat for the 20th time." — Mark Caplin.
"Unlike Latitude 38, we go where the wind doesn’t blow." — Jenny Smith.
"Ya, I had to pay someone to blow smoke up my boat." — Marc Lesko.
"Blow, blow, blow your boat, gently down the stream …" — Doug Jarmer.
"We’re gonna need a bigger fan!" — Clinton Perry.
"For the skipper whose wife is going through 'the change'" — Justin Blok.
"'Go sailing,' they said. 'The wind is free,' they said!" — Greg Ashby.
"The International Judges ruled this was not outside assistance." — John Dukat.
And now, a question from reader Peter Metcalf: "What happens when the fanboat backs too far under her own wind propulsion?"
Winner: "The final boss of Opti moms has been unlocked." — Fritz Baldauf.
SIGHTINGS
convergence comes home good jibes, live
In 2004, Randy Repass, wife Sally-Christine Rodgers and their 9-year-old son Kent-Harris Repass bid goodbye to friends, hoisted the sails on their Wylie 65 cat ketch Convergence, and sailed from Santa Cruz into the horizon. Their goal: a circumnavigation. At the end of October, 21 years and about 40,000 miles later, mission accomplished. Here's a quick debrief of a very long journey from Sally-Christine:
Tying the knot of a circumnavigation is a milestone that gives one pause. A deep sense of gratitude prevails, not to mention a splash of accomplishment. We left Santa Cruz in June of 2004 with our 9-yearold son, Kent-Harris — and friends and circumnavigators Linda Moore and Jim Foley with their 4-year-old twins, Dana and Trevor — for a straight-shot, 3,000-mile downwind run to the Marquesas. Then on to the Tuamotus and Tahiti where the Moore-Foleys departed.
Convergence meandered across the Pacific to the usual stops: Cook Islands, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, New Caledonia, Vanuatu and the Banks. We also ventured to New Zealand and explored Tasmania, then up the coast through the Great Barrier Reef of Australia to Darwin. We crossed to rarely visited Banda and on through many of Indonesia's islands, then to Malaysia and Thailand. Throughout, we spent as much time underwater as we could. These places are etched into our memories, and the people we encountered are etched into our hearts.
The Indian Ocean was the most spectacular sailing. The Red Sea, with its challenges of pirates and politics, provided a glimpse of the Sudan and Egypt during the Arab Spring. The Mediterranean opened our eyes to Western culture with a new lens. Turkey, Greece, Italy, Sicily, Malta, Albania, Montenegro, Croatia, Corsica, Sardinia, Spain, Morocco and the Canaries each left their historic, cultural, religious and culinary impressions.
In 2017, we crossed the Atlantic to Bermuda before heading north to anchor off Randy's family home in Marion, Massachusetts. We took in Nova Scotia and the Bras d'Or Lakes of Cape Breton before turning south through the familiar Caribbean. (The following seas off Venezuela will be remembered!) We bartered through the San Blas, crossed through Panama, and sailed up to Costa Rica.
By that time, we had developed our own routine. Everyone who takes on the challenge of a circumnavigation puts their own spin on it. One of the reasons our roundabout took so long is that Randy and I were still working, so we sailed only two to five months a year, leaving Convergence to return home. Then COVID hit, and for a while, everything changed. We left the boat in Mexico and returned home for two years. When the coast was finally clear again, we returned to luxuriate in Mexico's rich embrace, exploring her coastal Rivera and the Sea of Cortez before starting our way north toward home. The docklines were barely tied off when the questions started:
What were our favorite places? All of them held their own magic, but Ouvéa, in the Loyalty Islands, New Caledonia, remains in my dreams. Best and worst day's runs? Our best run was 250 miles in 24 hours from Suwarrow, Cook Islands, to Samoa. Our worst run: not accurately anticipating the Papagayo off Nicaragua! Most memorable moment? A 50-knot Meltemi in Greece that lasted 12 days. Other answers to other questions will come in time, when we're done decompressing.
All of our passages were made better because of the boat! Convergence, a custom Wilie 65, is a performance cruiser. She's fast, responsive, comfortable and easy to sail shorthanded. She motors at 10 knots and carries 400 gallons of fuel and 300 gallons of water. She has a pilothouse salon, with a galley up, accessible storage, inside continued on outside column of next sightings page
Our first standout moment came aboard Cheerio 2, a 1931 yawl once owned by Errol Flynn. Her current crew had just brought her down from Channel Islands Marina in the dark hours of early morning. This story unfolded with a grin during a recent episode of our Good Jibes podcast. Dolphins began gathering in the wake. Dozens at first. Then hundreds. Soon the water boiled with life as the boat pushed south, waiting for the breeze to fill. Cheerio 2 moved through a living current of thousands until the entire crew fell silent, listening to the sound of breathing animals gliding just beneath the hull.
from newport beach
A few slips over, the Western Flyer drew a steady stream of visitors. The boat that carried John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts to the Sea of Cortez has been rebuilt from keel to mast step, and the captain was tucked inside the wheelhouse giving a tour when the recorder came out. The visit turned into an impromptu interview as he read the closing passage from Steinbeck's book, the freshly restored rig humming overhead. The space felt alive with the smell of new wood and the stories of Port Townsend shipwrights who brought the boat back to life.
Every corner of the festival delivered
convergence — continued
nav station with 360-degree visibility, and can be sailed from inside in inclement weather. She boasts an enviable engine compartment with standing headroom at the workbench and a vise.
We like our practical, unstayed carbon fiber rig. Our decks are clear, with USCG stainless rails for safety, a reliable underdeck windlass and a "beach deck" where dinghies and kayaks can be easily launched and stowed. Although friends and family occasionally joined us along our travels, it was the camaraderie of cruisers and the generosity of communities that inspired. The world is big, but our commonality far outweighs our differences — something we all need to embrace!
We learned so much. Do a shakedown cruise! Keep a sense of humor! Keep your love alive! Be open to experiences you least expect! The oceans are more fragile than we realize. Do whatever you can to reduce your footprint! Cruising teaches you to need less and conserve more.
— a sistership to the research/charter vessel 'Derek M. Baylis', both of which are notable and noticeable for their freestanding carbon masts and wishbone booms — is a swift passagemaker whose cat-ketch configuration makes her easy to sail shorthanded. Left, below: anchored in Greece. Left center: 'Convergence' (center) in Bahia Santa Maria during the 2024 Baja HaHa. Top left: in bad weather, the boat can be sailed from inside the large pilothouse. Top center and right: Kent-Harris left as a boy and came back a man.
'Convergence'
good jibes convergence —
Even on land, we are now more acutely mindful of our use of water, power and resources. When you are at sea, your insignificance is magnified. Keeping that humility is a life lesson. Among our biggest gifts is that son Kent-Harris, now 30, skippers Convergence. We are still in love, sailing as a family, and dreaming of our next adventure.
— sally-christine rodgers
first-ever parkinson's benefit regatta
Registration is now open for the first-ever Bay Area charity regatta benefiting the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research and the Parkinson's Association of Northern California. The race, organized by the US affiliate of the Neptune Project (headquartered in
continued on outside column of next sightings page
You can connect with other organizations and events here: www. latitude38.com/feature/heeling-power-sailing; www.give.michaeljfox.org/neptuneproject. Facebook: Sailing4Parkinsons
something new. Sea chantey singers warmed up along the docks with harmonies that drifted across the harbor. A proud Grand Banks owner talked about years spent cruising to Catalina, Anacapa, and Desolation Sound. A photographer with decades behind the lens shared memories of cold morning starts, tight crossings and classic yachts he has chased under sail since the film days. He insisted that the best photos always come from getting closer and catching the crew in motion. Another sailor described trailering his wooden sloop north for summer cruising, then bringing her back down the coast in a southerly that
— continued parkinson's regatta — continued
soaked the rail and tested every seam in the hull and sails. The docks felt like a floating campfire circle, each boat ready with another story.
The next episode follows a family aboard the boat Flyer on a long passage from Seattle to California. Their journey included Haida Gwaii, where anchorages were shared with whales that surfaced close enough to hear every exhale. Farther south, the crew swam with sea lions in the Channel Islands and watched a curious octopus stalk a crab near a harbor wall. The final twist for the youth on board was seeing San Francisco continued in middle column of next sightings page
left: When Amy Bridge met Bertrand Delhom and sailed with him aboard 'Neptune', she was inspired to help raise awareness and funds for Parkinson's research through sailing. Top right: The 60-ft aluminum sloop 'Neptune' was designed for the 1977 Whitbread Race. Bottom middle: The Sailing 4 Parkinson's regatta was officially announced at the Corinthian Yacht Club, Tiburon, in September.
France), will be hosted by Corinthian Yacht Club in Tiburon, April 1112, 2026, on World Parkinson's Day, and aims to raise a research and advocacy fund and to develop sailing programs for people with Parkinson's. So far, 11 Bay Area yacht clubs have committed their support, along with a cohort of medical professionals from UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, UC Davis, Kaiser and Stanford University.
The Neptune Project is named for a 60-ft aluminum sloop that participated in the 2023-2024 Ocean Globe Race (OGR), and whose crew included Bertrand Delhom from France, a lifelong sailor who has Parkinson's disease, and doctor-skipper Tanneguy Raffray. Diagnosed with Parkinson's at age 51, Delhom is the first sailor with Parkinson's to have completed the OGR. The eight-month experience proved lifechanging for his health, mental spirit and his whole family. Despite the challenges of the disease, crewmember Delhom completed the full circumnavigation, proving that limitations are often set by perception rather than reality.
A good example of this is 71-year-old Bay Area sailor Craig Dahl. A few years ago, Craig was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Having been a passionate sailor since the age of 4, he found the idea of a condition that could limit his mobility or independence difficult to accept. After the initial shock, Craig learned to approach Parkinson's like any other challenge in life: with patience, creativity and a sense of humor. "I don't see Parkinson's as something that defines me, just something that I'm learning to navigate." He has chosen to focus on natural healing and an active lifestyle that includes sailing out of Clipper Yacht Harbor, Sausalito, aboard his Catalina 36.
"Sailing 4 Parkinson's felt like the perfect blend of everything I love: sailing, community and a sense of hope," Craig explained. "My first sail with Kevin Roesler, Amy Bridge and Shelly Willard reminded me that Parkinson's doesn't have to mean sitting on the sidelines. Being on the water again, surrounded by people who understand and are focused on something positive, was incredibly therapeutic. It's not just the sailing itself, it's laughter, teamwork, and a shared sense of purpose."
Raffray and Delhom launched the Neptune Project, a collective journey defined by courage and solidarity. With the motto "Who dares, lives," they show how the sea can be a powerful source of energy and resilience in the face of illness, confirmed by studies showing that sailing can have a significant benefit to people with Parkinson's.
Sharing this message of hope and sailing with others with the disease, the Neptune Project US concept was born by Sebastopol resident and longtime sailor Amy Bridge, supported by a team of dedicated Bay Area sailors, project volunteers and Parkinson's advocates.
Neptune is now sailing to represent support for the worldwide Parkinson's community and to raise funds for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, the largest nonprofit Parkinson's research organization, and for local nonprofit Parkinson's service providers. On the local and global racing scenes, the boat brings a presence and attention to the disease, the need for a cure and services, and to bring the sport of sailing to the Parkinson's community. Programs and regattas will then be replicated and perpetuated worldwide for this purpose.
In addition to regatta event host Corinthian Yacht Club, the project has recruited project ambassadors from nearly a dozen Bay Area yacht clubs, including Berkeley, Encinal, Inverness, Petaluma, Presidio, South Beach, Richmond, Sausalito, Marin and Sequoia. The event unites the legion of sailors who recognize the Healing Power of Sailing. — amy bridge
Top
SIGHTINGS
breaking down boat donations
After more than four decades of observing vessel donations, I've seen nearly every misconception about how the process works, and why it often benefits both the donor and the nonprofit far more than people realize.
Why Boat Donations Exist
Boat donations serve several purposes. For many owners — especially those with high-end or specialty vessels — the tax deduction from a qualified charitable contribution can be more advantageous than attempting a private sale in a slow market. For the nonprofit, the vessel becomes an asset that can be chartered or sold, with proceeds supporting its mission.
In most cases, boats are not sold outright. They are placed into a program through a carefully managed process that maximizes value and ensures full compliance with IRS guidelines. Nonprofits that specialize in vessel donations follow a detailed sequence: appraisal, title transfer, insurance, and documentation — all handled confidentially, discreetly, and with the utmost diligence.
When most boaters hear the word donation, they picture an aging hull or a project boat sitting in the yard. That may have been true years ago, but it's not the case today — at least not for reputable marine donation programs. In fact, for insurance, appraisal and liability reasons, most organizations can only accept vessels that are fully operable, insurable and in sound condition. Many require a full survey or at least a thorough inspection.
If a nonprofit ends up with a project they didn't know about, it can not only erase any potential benefit but actually cost the organization money. The general rule is that a vessel must be capable of being sailed or motored safely. Insurance underwriters require it, as do surveyors conducting appraisals.
Surveyors generally try to be fair and give a vessel the highest value allowable by law, but if the boat needs major work and isn't fundamentally operational, they have to call it like it is.
Moral Responsibility
Organizations also carry a moral responsibility. Boats are expensive to store, maintain and insure, and a poorly handled donation can quickly become a burden instead of a benefit. That's why credible programs refuse marginal vessels: those with expired engines, rotted decks or other issues that make them unsafe or uninsurable.
Also, the nonprofit must keep the boat for three years, unless a different arrangement is made with the donor. In that way, the donor maintains their tax deduction. If the organization sells the boat within three years, the donation deduction is limited to the sale price of the boat. So there is a moral responsibility on the part of the nonprofit to keep the boat in its program for three years.
Appraisal vs. Survey: Knowing the Difference
One of the most common misunderstandings donors have is the difference between a marine survey and a marine appraisal. The two are not the same.
A survey determines condition: the structural and mechanical integrity of the vessel. It's the type of inspection a buyer orders before purchase, focusing on seaworthiness and safety.
An appraisal, on the other hand, determines value: the fair market value of the vessel, which is required for tax purposes. It considers continued on outside column of next sightings page
good jibes
Bay from the water as they completed their first passage sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge. The miles south carried a mix of quiet coves, open-ocean nights and friends joining for a new leg, highlighting why West Coast cruising is so compelling.
For racers, the podcast with Olympian Stuart McNay is not to be missed. His life in sailing stretches from messy childhood races to five Olympic campaigns on the world stage. Stories include cold-water dinghy days in New England and long regattas in heavy air. What stands out most is his passion for coaching sailors of all ages.
Whether guiding a junior sailor through
— continued boat donations —
an upwind groove or helping an Olympian fine-tune a race plan, he brings the same spark found in elite competition. He's both a competitor and coach who shares his insights into what it takes to get to the podium at the Olympic level, or how to upgrade your casual racing skills.
All four episodes drop listeners into real sailing life. To hear from West Coast sailors, head to www.latitude38.com/goodjibes or any favorite podcast platform. Sailors with stories worth sharing should reach out to ryan@latitude38.com. Keep the tales flowing, one good jibe at a time.
— ryan foland
comparable sales, location, age, design and market trends. For the IRS, this appraisal must be performed by an independent, qualified marine appraiser, not by the nonprofit itself.
The Changing Market
Since 2020, the boating market and requests by owners about the donation process have shifted dramatically. During the pandemic, boat sales surged, then softened sharply in 2023–2025. As values adjusted, many owners found themselves with vessels that no longer reflected their pre-pandemic market price. For them, donations offered a practical and dignified exit, especially for well-kept yachts whose owners wanted to support a cause.
Over the years, many organizations have received everything from small sailboats and trawlers to high-end catamarans, offshore racers and classic wooden vessels. Some have appraised well into six figures. Contrary to popular belief, these are not "old clunkers" but capable, often upgraded yachts — new engines, paint, electronics, rigging — donated by owners who value legacy as much as deduction.
Oversight and Responsibility
All vessel donations are governed by IRS rules, specifically Publication 561 and Form 8283. IRS 501(c)(3) nonprofits must handle donations in strict compliance with those standards, and donors must receive proper documentation, including acknowledgment letters and IRS forms for deductions over $5,000.
The Nuts and Bolts
There are two types of 501(c)(3) nonprofits: publicly supported 50% nonprofit organizations (e.g., Boy Scouts, youth programs, maritime schools and churches, etc.), and privately supported 30% nonprofit organizations (e.g., certain yacht clubs or foundations).
With a donation to a publicly supported nonprofit, a donor can deduct up to 50% of adjusted gross income per year for five years. For a privately supported nonprofit, the limit is 30% per year for five years. In either case, the full deduction is realized over time, just at a different rate.
For the most part, a donor cannot deduct an amount that is more than their "Adjusted Cost Basis" in the boat, or the total amount a donor has invested in the boat, including purchase price and upgrades and additions. What is generally not included are berth fees, insurance and periodic general maintenance. For context, a boat's engine service would likely not be part of the Adjusted Cost Basis, but brandnew radar would.
The Reward for Donors and Nonprofits Alike
At its best, a well-managed donation benefits everyone involved. The donor receives a legitimate tax deduction and peace of mind knowing their boat continues to have a useful life. A single good vessel donation can fund scholarships, restore classic wooden boats, or create opportunities for young people to experience the water for the first time. It's a genuine win-win built on trust, transparency and respect for the boats themselves.
So, the next time you hear that donations are only for "old boats that won't sell," remember: Nothing could be further from the truth. Many of the finest yachts afloat today began their second life as a charitable gift.
— john 'woody' skoriak
Clockwise from top right: The 48-ft steel ketch 'Endeavor' was donated to Call of the Sea and sold to a cruising couple; this 1954 Abeking Rasmussen 52-ft wooden yawl was restored and has found her way back to her roots on the East Coast; this Polaris 43 was donated by a couple who had cruised her for many years. A beautiful boat, inside and out.
JOHN 'WOODY' SKORIAK
sailing books, 2025
It's no mystery why print media should join the beluga whale and black rhino on the endangered species list — why buy a book when you can read (or hear read to you) pretty much any article or book ever written online at the literal touch of a button? So call us old-fashioned on this point: There's nothing so satisfying as putting your feet up in some shady cockpit or cozy berth somewhere with the ink-and-paper real deal.
Here are a few 2025 books we'd bring along on that cruise — and that would (hint, hint) make great gifts for the "old-fashioned" sailor(s) in your life. (Note that the prices listed here are suggested retail prices. You can almost always find these books — as well as their digital and audio versions — less expensively at the usual online places.)
The Way of the Sailor (David Kilmer, $25) — Kilmer's latest sailing book (most of the others are fiction) is a delight to read. One of the reasons is that, while sailing figures
Our 2025 sailing-book recommendations. (That's David Kilmer's 'The Way of the Sailor' in the middle.) Two more recent additions this year include: 'A Well and Misspent Youth', by Ben E. Neely (see ad page 26), and three books from Julia Shovein (see ad page 22).
prominently, it's also used as a lens to "learn the ropes" of life. One example of many is the new-to-us revelation of Sod's Law, "which is an even stricter edict than Murphy's Law," writes Kilmer. "Sod's Law states that if something can go wrong, it will. But that, furthermore, the misfortune will occur at the worst possible time. Worse yet, the degree of failure is in direct proportion to the effort expended and to the need for success." (All these years we've been living Sod's Law and didn't even know it!) Kilmer's writing and wisdom — as well as that of many other sailors and friends whose stories he shares — shine through from a lifetime around boats and sailing. But the real treasure of this book is that it has something to say to everyone.
Cathy Simon — World Sailor (Cathy Simon, $39.95) — If you ever get on Jeopardy! and the final question references "the first woman to complete the sailing trifecta: a circumnavigation, a Northwest Passage and a circumnav-
gifts for readers
igation of North America," Cathy Simon will win you the game. Aboard the Taswell 58 Celebrate with husband Charlie, Cathy has completed all three of those milestones, and with Charlie, has written a number of cruising stories that have appeared in other books and publications (including this one).
Like the couple's previous large-format paperback books, Cathy Simon — World Sailor is chock full of fabulous graphics, photos and information, including a great section on transiting Panama (including the pertinent links and websites). While Cathy certainly contributes her "woman's point of view," it's in a measured way — which is to say the book is a good reference and read for sailors of either gender, and a wonderful companion book to the Simons' earlier books.
The Track of the Typhoon (William Washburn Nutting, $24.95) — The copyright page in this book notes it is a
"facsimile" of the original 1925 edition. We have no idea how or if that differs from a "reprint," but we're sure happy it was redone, because this is one of the most delightful sailing books we've ever read. Nutting was the editor of Motor Boating magazine back in the day, and later founded the Cruising Club of America. The book's namesake is a 45-ft (LOD) Atkin gaff ketch. She was built in Nova Scotia at a yard on the grounds of Alexander Graham Bell's laboratory. Launched in July of 1920, and with barely more than a week's shakedown, Nutting and two crew sailed Typhoon to Cowes, England, and back again. By late November, they were back in New York, "having sailed 7,000-odd miles that had taken her twice across the North Atlantic" in less than four months. In between departure and arrival was one for the books. And Nutting crafted a worthy one.
Cruising Around the World (Capt. George Greenberg, $39.95) — "You got me inspired and on a path to write my own book and I just finished it." So wrote George Greenberg in an email a few months ago. (FWIW, he's the third or fourth Changes contributor in the last 10 years to tell us that.) Regular readers will recall George and fiancée Wei as the ones who became "sailors without a country to land in" during the pandemic a few years ago. They ended up pingponging around the Indian Ocean, up the Red Sea and into the Med, being denied entry due to the closing down of ports — for four months — before finally being allowed to check into Cyprus. This book tells that story in greater detail, as well as George's personal tale of a born adventurer who grew up in Florida but lived and traveled all over. He'd long harbored a dream of sailing around the world, which began in earnest when he ordered a brand-new Tartan 4300 that eventually launched as Rio in 2008. The circumnavigation officially began in St. George's Harbor, Grenada, in mid-2008, and ended there in 2022, 14 years and some 40,000 miles later. In between were lots of great characters, great stories and great lessons in this great read.
Under Wide and Starry Skies (Nicholas Coghlan, $35) — We're of the opinion that you can't have too many cruising guides, which is why we were more than a little enamored of this new book, especially because the destinations it discusses are off the beaten path. Over the last 40some years, Nick Coghlan and his wife Jenny have sailed some 70,000 offshore miles in two different boats — both of which were only 27 feet long. With a couple of exceptions, these 50 recommendations are for places "where you won't be troubled by the arrival of a cruising flotilla or by a novice dragging anchor into you." Furthermore, "none can be reached in a charter yacht or by a daysail; you will need your own boat." We can't speak to how well Coghlan covers the places we have never been (which is most of them), but for the few we have visited, he does a great job, augmenting each entry with an "If You Go…" page that addresses yearly weather, any needed permits or restrictions, specific charts and other reference materials. The writing itself is so appealing that we found ourselves enjoying "visits" to places like Luderitz, Namibia, and Ascension Island, even though we will likely never go to these places.
— latitude / jr
ON BOARD THE MOTHERSHIP
Stepping
aboard Profligate is akin to stepping inside a great legacy. This 63-ft custom Hughes catamaran has served as the Baja Ha-Ha mothership since the rally's third edition in 1996. If her big white hulls could talk, we're certain they would spill nearly three decades of the most interesting stories. The history of the mothership and the Ha-Ha is a rich one, intertwined with the history of this magazine and the countless sailors who have been inspired to sail over the horizon. It is a tapestry formed with places, personalities and oh, so many tales, with each year adding a colorful new layer. Whether from your first or 31st Baja Ha-Ha, your story adds a new strand.
As we settled into our bunks aboard Profligate, we understood this was not just another Ha-Ha, but a moment in time. It was Richard Spindler's final sail south as the Grand Poobah, and the beginning of the next era of an event that means so much to so many.
An inside look at the Poobah's final sail south means stepping into his world. He has built his life, this event included, on telling stories, and has accumulated more than a few of his own in the process.
The annual kickoff party at West Marine in San Diego was full of anticipation, great costumes, and a few boats scrambling to make last-minute repairs. Of the 137 boats that signed up for the 31st Baja Ha-Ha, 105 made it to the start, departing under a perfectly beautiful San Diego sky. The crew of West Coast Multihulls sent the fleet off
in style, hosting the kickoff boat with revelry and wide smiles.
The smallest boat to depart was the Cal 29 Ondina from Richmond Yacht Club, doublehanded by John Walsh and Liz Newkirk. The crew reported a fabulous sail and intended to continue on to see where the wind might take them. The largest boat in the fleet was the Absolute Navetta 68 motor yacht Poor Decisions, captained by Merlin Cormier of San Diego. While it is a sailing event at heart, the Ha-Ha has always been open to anyone who wants to cruise the coast of Baja, and thus Poor Decisions was welcomed in the "No Comprende" division.
We connected with many Ha-Ha vets, including several who had done the very first one. Garry Dobson of the Catalina 470 Stainsby Girl, sailing out of Alameda, headed south with the Ha-Ha in 1994 on a much smaller boat. This year was his seventh Ha-Ha, and he was joined by first mate Cheryl Kerns and crew Karen Miller and Jim Painter. Garry reported a wonderful sail, and noted the biggest change over the decades: how much Cabo has grown, and how challenging and expensive it has become to get slips compared with the early '90s. You could easily sit and talk with HaHa sailors for hours. Their pasts are just as interesting as their unknown futures, now starting with new adventures ahead.
This year, the weather was nearperfect with light air mornings and gentle breezes in the afternoons. The last leg had the sportiest stretch, with more than 20 knots as boats were heading to the Cape and into Cabo. The breeze caught the crew of the HallbergRassy Rejoice off guard. Owner Bob Alziebler explains, "As we approached Land's End near the arch, we made one last jibe to a port tack. I was going to sail a little longer before bringing down the sails and got complacent and did not rig the preventer line. I went below to stow fishing poles and turn off the watermaker and generator. When I returned, the wind had increased to 23 knots. I began to step out of the cockpit on the port side when the boat rolled and we accidentally jibed. The mainsheet and traveler took the brunt of the shock but when the boom accelerated back, it hit me square in the face knocking me back into the cockpit. I'm very fortunate: Had it hit me in the back of the head, I would have been knocked overboard and the results could have been fatal."
Despite this mishap, Richard commented more than once that he could not recall a Ha-Ha with nicer weather. The rally once again traveled an ocean that shifted from blue to deep turquoise, while the air and water turned warmer by the day.
The sea life added its own magic, the sightings growing by the mile as we headed south. The fleet saw orcas, humpback whales, gray whales and many dolphins. In Bahia Santa Maria, the crew of Santiago Becerra's Espiritu
'Profligate' was again the immigration station.
PAUL KAMEN PAUL
'Profligate' showing off her well-earned Baja Ha-Ha flag collection. She is now for sale.
Ha-Ha lessons learned. During the blustery last jibe into Cabo, Bob Alziebler caught the boom in his face. It could have been worse.
FOR THE POOBAH'S LAST HA-HA
Santo, an Atlantic 57 cat out of San Diego, hired a boat to take them to where they were able to swim with whales, dolphins and striped marlin, capturing some incredible footage in the process. Fishing this year was lively across the fleet. Boats landed dorado, wahoo and tuna. We watched yellowfin and marlin launch through the waves around us. Aboard Profligate, we caught a tuna that quickly became sashimi, released several bonito, and at one point caught seven dorado in a single morning, giving us enough to share.
Turtle Bay delivered its usual warmth and hospitality. A new volleyball afternoon was an unexpected hit. Bazeball was lively, with the Poobah throwing his ceremonial first pitch for the final time. Afterward, the local kids collected the generous spread of bats, gloves, shoes and balls donated by the fleet. The beach party drew a big crowd, and the charity hot dog sales raised nearly $800. The women extended their undefeated streak in the famous tug of war, hauling the men across the sand once again. With an extra lay day due to the wind forecast, there was plenty of time to explore. Some hiked to the ridge overlooking the anchorage. Others walked the length of the village,
visited the historical 1887 church, or wandered to the cemetery perched above the bay.
Bahia Santa Maria was breathtaking. Though immigration challenges delayed shore access for some, the anchorage still felt extraordinary. The rock 'n' roll party on the bluff was packed with cruisers enjoying the views, the food, and a dance party that lasted most of the day. The band travels more than 10 hours to play here year after year, and for tips only, which must be a pretty good deal as they continue to return. One of the enduring elements of the Ha-Ha is the bond between the fleet and the communities in Turtle Bay and Bahia Santa Maria. Doña de Mallorca — Richard's other half, and first mate for the past 29 Baja Ha-Ha's — spoke with tenderness about these relationships. She is proud of Richard and what he has built, and that he cares deeply about making the event fun, especially for kids. She grew emotional during her final conga line on the bluffs of Bahia Santa Maria, and told us how much she will miss the families there and in Turtle Bay.
"It is amazing how close you can get to people you see one day a year," Doña said.
Mechanical issues were modest and manageable across the fleet. Some boats saw autopilot hiccups; others had electrical or battery quirks. Two windlasses misbehaved, including ours, which made for very interesting anchoring involving all 11 crew working to drop and retrieve the anchor. One Volvo Penta banjo bolt sheared off before Turtle Bay, but the crew found a creative solution and kept moving. We loaned out two batteries. Only one boat, Finest Kind, had to turn back to San Diego, wisely choosing to repair before continuing.
Richard Spindler and Doña de Mallorca enjoy their last Baja Ha-Ha.
SYDNEE RUDOLPH
LATITUDE / NICKI
One of the many spectacular Ha-Ha sunsets.
ON BOARD THE MOTHERSHIP
The only significant scare came when a man-overboard beacon was accidentally triggered, prompting several boats to divert toward the signal. The response was swift, and the relief immediate once it became clear the alarm was accidental. The moment underscored the fleet's instinct to act quickly and collectively when it matters. Starlink proved to be a powerful tool, helping boats troubleshoot, coordinate, and communicate with ease offshore.
Life on Profligate has its own rhythm, shaped over decades — part circus, part newsroom and part floating village. Profligate is the stage, the office, the immigration desk, and sometimes the complaint window. Crewing for the Poobah includes all the normal coastal cruising tasks, plus a number
of jobs that quietly keep the Ha-Ha going. The backstage work of the rally is invisible to most of the fleet — and that is by design. We were 11 aboard, which might sound like a crowd, but Profligate has more nooks than a library. Richard, assistant Poobah Patsy Verhoeven and Doña de Mallorca work all year to prepare, but the moment the lines are cast off, a complex choreographed dance begins.
Ahead of the kickoff, in addition to provisioning and preparing the boat, the crew and a few friends form an assembly line at Ullman Sails to pack backpacks with swag, Meet the Fleet guides, a fresh issue of Latitude 38, and of course, the coveted Baja Ha-Ha gear. Then we move to flipping burgers and pouring beer for a fleet bubbling over with excitement. Once underway, Profligate becomes a mobile headquarters. From planning and coordinating with Mexican officials and people at both stops, to hauling around gear, speakers, and swag to sell, to managing immigration, the work is constant. Processing 105 boats was surprisingly fast, but still took the better part of a day.
Other duties include keeping a watchful eye on the fleet, coordinating help when needed, and hosting the morning VHF roll call. When faced with a situation, the Poobah can often be seen shaking his head briefly before he gets to work. His patience is long. The fleet is generally civilized, offering help, and sharing parts and generosity. That doesn't mean there aren't exceptions, but the tone, long ago set by the mothership, is that of solving problems, being kind, and keeping perspective.
Three of us aboard Profligate were newcomers, myself included. Also
aboard were a handful of Ha-Ha vets, including former Latitude 38 employee Mitch Perkins, Vince Rubino, Dino Pasquale, Chuck Skewes, Paul Ludgate and Paul Kamen. Experiencing the event from inside the mothership means being immersed in the layers of work and care that make the rally function.
Among the new crew was 23-yearold Dylan Wolverton, nicknamed Tex for his Texas roots. With a last-minute invitation from the Poobah, who is friends with his parents, he stepped aboard with wide-open curiosity and no prior knowledge of the event.
"I did not know what to expect. I just bought a plane ticket and showed up," he told us. "I did not know anyone going in. But the crew was the best part. Everyone was so nice and helpful and willing to teach. I want to do more of this."
Britton Buss, also a first-time Ha-Ha sailor who has cruised extensively, noticed something slightly different. "The most striking part was seeing younger folks heading off on a grand adventure, and older folks finally casting off to chase the dreams they have held for decades." As for this writer, stepping aboard meant stepping into the legacy that has shaped my life in so many ways. It is impossible not to be inspired by the ripples that Latitude 38 and the Baja Ha-Ha have had on the lives of West Coast sailors and adventurers for many decades.
Dino, who is now on his 19th Ha-Ha, and 17th aboard Profligate, shared his first experience on the mothership in 2007, when a massive spinnaker wrap forced the crew to tie down the sail and motor 45 miles toward shore to find
Left: Dylan "Tex" Wolverton shows the dinner catch for 'Profligate' crew. Center: Sailing into the sunset — literally! Right: The fleet was protected and warmly welcomed at Bahia Santa Maria.
Ha-Ha legends, Richard Spindler and Patsy Verhoeven.
safer conditions for going aloft. What struck him most was Richard's calm competence; "No blame, no drama, just a clear decision about where to go and what to do next."
Vince, also a seasoned Profligate crew member, added that his greatest takeaway from years of conversations with the fleet was simple: Do not wait for the perfect boat or perfect circumstances. "Better to do it cheap and do it than wait for 'someday,'" he said. "Invest in skills rather than the boat." He has watched some of the most outfitted boats have the most trouble, while simple boats with good crews thrived. "I am so impressed with Richard and Doña, and how many people Richard has inspired by exemplifying a completely different and entirely authentic version of success."
Richard offered many reflections over the course of the trip. More than 3,000 boats and 14,000 sailors have traveled south with the Baja Ha-Ha since its inception. The safety record is remarkable: a single death due to a heart attack, one dismasting, one broken rudder, two boats inexplicably on the rocks in mild conditions, and one boat sunk by a whale strike. Considering the number of people and miles involved (equal to 437 circumnavigations), it has been a remarkably seamless run.
One of the tremendous things about the Ha-Ha, Richard said, is how people help one another. Over the years, at least 270 people have crewed on Profligate, contributing to the well-oiled machine that is the Baja Ha-Ha. Richard possesses a deep well of patience and generosity of spirit, and is always willing to answer questions or chat with an intrepid sailor. He's collected and told
FOR THE POOBAH'S LAST HA-HA
as many stories as anyone in this fleet.
The smallest boat ever to do the HaHa was a Mirror 17, which completed the rally twice. The largest was a 94-ft N/M Able back in 2000. It is not unusual to see six to eight sailors over 80 in any given year; the youngest participant so far was 3 months old. There was the Las Vegas couple aboard a Columbia 34 who arrived in Cabo barely knowing how to anchor. They later went on to sail across the Pacific to Australia. In three decades, Richard does not recall ever seeing over 30 knots for long. One year, an easterly over 30 at Cabo forced a handful of the fleet to anchor on the Pacific side, which strangely was the safest place to be. The baseball field in Turtle Bay was dirt for a long time and is now a beautiful turf diamond, with a soccer stadium on the way.
Richard remembers the day before the start of the first Ha-Ha when a Hans Christian anchored in La Playa in San Diego and the crew rowed ashore. When they returned, the boat was gone. The city had towed it away, and the woman aboard claimed officials had gone through her panty drawer. So Richard asked the fleet to send panties to the San Diego Bureau of Tourism and Convention. Since then, the fleet has had a much warmer welcome from the city.
People are often surprised at how much more the event is than they expected. It offers a nice balance of sailing, down time and parties that build real community and camaraderie. One of the biggest misconceptions is that the Ha-Ha is simply a drunk-fest rolling down the coast. While there are certainly parties, and some boats keep the music going late, it is at heart a group of serious sailors, many setting off on
big dreams and long-term adventures. It is fun and relatively easy: downwind sailing, nice weather, good anchorages and places to hide if bad weather does show up. It remains a great introduction to cruising.
What will Richard miss the most?
The people in Mexico at the two stops, and the beauty of Bahia Santa Maria, along with meeting and greeting the fleet and learning their stories and trajectories. The Long Beach Yacht Club ran a similar event in 1993, which helped spark the Ha-Ha. Richard brought enthusiasm and creativity to broaden the concept, adding events at each stop.
There have been countless other memorable moments.
Patsy offered insights formed over many years aboard her Gulfstar 50,
Left: Ha-Ha smiles all round. Right: Volleyball finds its way onto the Ha-Ha calendar.
CLIFF CLARK
Sydney Clark, 10, catches dinner for the family aboard 'Dr. John'.
ON BOARD THE MOTHERSHIP
Talion. When asked about the hardest part of the rally, she surprised us by saying it was not weather or logistics, but language. "I never learned Spanish," she said, explaining that while Mexican officials are consistently kind, being able to speak more fluently would lighten many of the practical challenges. Her favorite part of the Ha-Ha is the sailing. "Solo driving at nine knots, dead downwind with the symmetrical chute up," she said. Her favorite Ha-Ha memory is from 2012: "We had Bill Lilly's Moontide and Glenn Twichell's Beach Access — two big catamarans — rafted up with Talion in the middle. That was a party for the ages. Very few people in the fleet missed it. And let's just say … I was younger then!" Her hope for the future? "I truly believe the Ha-Ha has given countless people the confidence to experience an offshore world they may never have tried on their own, thanks to the encouragement, guidance, and confidence that Richard, Latitude 38, and the Ha-Ha Committee have given
them." She hopes Chuck will take all of Richard's ideas and make them his own — gradually. "The Ha-Ha works because of the foundation he [Richard] built, and it will thrive if Chuck adapts it in a way that feels natural to him."
As we approached Cabo this year, the water was warm and turquoise beneath Profligate's hulls, and the significance of the moment settled in. This was the last run south for Richard,
all who are sailing the Pacific Coast of Mexico
Doña, and Profligate (she is also now up for sale!) in this role. But it's not the end of the rally. Chuck Skewes will take the reins with Patsy by his side, and Latitude 38 with continuing coverage, sponsorship and support, to continue the legacy with the same care and enthusiasm that Richard brought for 31 years. Richard will continue writing entry bios, and Doña will help in her own way. The Baja Ha-Ha will continue to be what it has always been: An evolving tradition grounded in maximizing the fun and connections for West Coast cruisers.
Being aboard the mothership for this final run south was a privilege. It was a chance to see the mechanics, humanity, humor, and grace that make the Ha-Ha what it is. The Baja Ha-Ha has always been more than a rally; it has been a story carried by thousands. This year, as we stepped off Profligate for the last time, we felt grateful to have shared in this chapter of that story.
— latitude/nicki
Baja Ha-Ha 'Newbah' Chuck Skewes and his partner Britt Buss.
LATITUDE / NICKI
66’ GORBON 66 ’97
$425,000
Bajavento. A luxurious performance vessel that can easily be sailed shorthanded. Professionally maintained. Cruise in style and comfort.
58’ TAYANA 58 DECK SALON ’06
$467,900 Majestic. With electric winches in the cockpit, a Leisure Furl boom and bow thruster, she is easily handled by a couple. LLC-owned.
46’ TAYANA 460 PILOTHOUSE ’02
$295,000 Peregrine. Masterfully engineered and custom built. Definitely priced to sell. All offers seriously considered by motivated seller.
54’ ROBERTS 54 ’79
$225,000 Spirit. Rugged bluewater vessel designed with comfort and safety in mind. Nicely upgraded. Coast Guard Certified for up to 42 passengers.
45’ HUNTER 450 PASSAGE ‘’99 $79,500 Focus. Designed to provide maximum comfort and liveability. Spacious salon. Huge master cabin. Motivated seller! Bring all offers!
HYDROVANE
www.flopstopper.com
• Makes every anchorage comfortable by greatly reducing side-to-side rolling.
To find crew or join a boat all cruisers and sailors with voyaging dreams should visit the Latitude 38 Crew List at: www.latitude38.com Sign up and sail!
Heading South?
Follow the adventures of Baja HaHa participants in the magazine in ‘Changes in Latitudes’ and online on our ‘Heading South’ page at: www.latitude38.com/headingsouth
If you are cruising Mexico, Central America or off to the Pacific, send your story and photos to: editorial@latitude38.com
Latitude 38 has been covering West Coast cruisers along the coast and around the world since 1977!
www.maritimemedicalguides.org
Thank You!
Latitude 38 Welcomes Aboard Chuck Skewes as the new Grand Poobah for the 32nd Annual Baja Ha-Ha:
The place to be in La Paz, conveniently located near downtown. marinadelapaz@prodigy.net.mx
011-52 (612) 122-1646 www.marinadelapaz.com
(612) 122-4624 • info@golapaz.com • www.golapaz.com La Paz Tourism Board welcomes you to La Paz! Enjoy our Baja Ha-Ha Beach Fiesta Sunday, November 23 Haul-outs
"I am extremely honored and proud to take the reins of what I feel is the best event for cruisers in the world. Richard, Dona, and Patsy (who is staying with the Baja Ha-Ha crew) have set the bar extremely high with a great formula that makes cruising to Mexico a reality for so many cruisers. Although filling those shoes is an impossible task, I feel confident that the Baja Ha-Ha will continue at the level people expect or exceed expectations."
Stay tuned for updates on the opening for Baja Ha-Ha 2026. Departure Early November
To keep in touch with announcements follow 'Lectronic Latitude at www.latitude38.com.
+52 (638) 112-0204 cabralesboatyard.com
Recinto Portuario 91-A, Zona Astilleros, Puerto Peñasco, Sonora, Mexico
2025 SEASON CHAMPIONS —
As Thanksgiving passes and November turns to December, there are many annual traditions that must be observed. Holiday decorations go up, you will be forced to listen to Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" several thousand times, and at Latitude 38 we will be highlighting the season champions from various fleets and yacht clubs.
Latitude's "Season Champions" feature is an annual tradition in which we briefly highlight the sailors and boats that won their various season championships throughout the course of 2025. With this feature, we hope to highlight as many champions as we can, starting with the first 10 featured here. More season champions will be featured in the January and February issues, and there is still time to submit your fleet's feature if you didn't make it into this edition.
J/105 — Blackhawk, Ryan Simmons, SFYC
The biggest one-design fleet on San Francisco Bay was won by a familiar name in 2025. Ryan Simmons and his team on Blackhawk (SFYC), winner of four of the past six Rolex Big Boat
Series (runner up this year), won the season title.
"We entered the 2025 season with the utmost confidence; we had ended last season winning our second consecutive Big Boat Series and four of the last five, returning with five of six of our long-term crew," Simmons tells Latitude of the team's season. "What a wonderfully humbling sport sailboat racing is! We opened the season with a 12th and 18th place in our first two races, more points than we accumulated in seven races at RBBS, it was an immediate reminder how hard it is to win in this fleet. Fortunately for team Blackhawk that would be our low water mark for the season.
"We were able to start putting some more consistency atop the scoreboard as the season went on," Simmons continues. "What is probably the best stretch we have ever had, over a 25-race stretch we finished outside of the top three only twice, one due to an exploded spinnaker and subsequent shrimping. True to form for the J/105 fleet, RBBS proved to be a battle, and we found ourselves in eighth place at the end of day one. Full credit to the crew for staying positive and committing to
our system; we worked hard and finished with a proud second-place finish in the RBBS and locked up the season championship.
"Off the water this was also a celebratory year for us: Kristin and I welcomed our daughter, CC Simmons, in early July," said Simmons of exciting off-ofthe-water happenings. "Further enforcing the fact that I have the best and most supportive wife, I was on the water racing in the July regatta 10 days later.
"Our core crew this season was Brent Draney, Nico Colomb, Collette Zaro, JR Rosenlicht, Jeremy Herzog, Jon Rosen and Lindsay Browne," Simmons continues. "Sailing with us at times we welcomed Liz Pino, Jessica Brownlow, Rex Cameron, Scooter Simmons and Blaine SooHoo. Next year is going to be our 20th season as a member of the J/105 class and it is currently as exciting, competitive and cohesive as ever. A member of our local fleet has won the North American Championship five of the last six years, only one of which was contested in San Francisco. With a regular 25+ boats and six sailors on board, the fleet is always looking to add to our crew lists. If interested check out the website www.sfj105.org."
Ryan Simmons and team racing aboard 'Blackhawk' in the 2025 Rolex Big Boat Series.
Ryan Simmons
DECEMBER EDITION
PHOTOS COURTESY THE WINNERS EXCEPT AS NOTED
J/24 — Tenacious Cuttlefish, Brandon and Addison Mercer, and William Pochereva, RYC
The J/24 fleet was won in 2025 by a team that hadn't raced regularly the year before in the form of Tenacious Cuttlefish (RYC), owned by Brandon Mercer and his daughter Addison. The team's skipper for the season was William Pochereva.
"William Pochereva is a world-class driver and tactician, and it was thrilling to be able to provide a program that showcased what he can do at the tiller," the elder Mercer tells Latitude "My daughter and co-owner Addison (age 17) convinced me to commit to the whole season, rallied crew, planned practices with Will, and got us there. We put the best people in the best positions. I'm not a great driver, but I can trim, so it was easy to see that Will on the helm was the right path to winning. During races, we were quiet, focused, and communicated about everything we saw and did."
"It was exciting to be at the helm this year, bringing Tenacious Cuttlefish back to the race course and adding more competition to the fleet," Pochereva tells us. "Sailing with Brandon and Addison Mercer as the core team, we had a rotating group of sailors join us including [RYC] locals, UC Berkeley sailors, foreign exchange students, friends and family. We focused on building the boat-handling skills of new and veteran sailors, sailing clean, and most importantly, having fun!"
ILCA 6 — Toshinara Takayanagi/ Ernie Galvan, RYC
The ILCA 6 season championship was as close as it could get. Quite literally. This year saw a neck-and-neck tie in the fleet, which crowned Toshinara Takayanagi and Ernie Galvan (both of whom race under the RYC burgee) as co-champions of the ILCA 6 class.
"It's never too late to start," Galvan tells Latitude. "I only started racing Lasers in 2019, at age 57. I had learned the boat a little bit at the Cal Sailing Club in 2000 under the watchful eyes of the late Bob Hood and James Wei. But I didn't sail much at all after having kids. Then in 2016, I bought Mark Halman's Laser for my son to use in the RYC junior program. Mark Halman won the ILCA 6 D24 Grand Prix in 2011. The Northern California Laser community is very welcoming and encouraging. Sailors like Emilio Castelli, Toshi Takayanagi and Chris Simenstad let me practice with them even though I was mostly upside down the first couple of years. But they never let me get down on myself about it. Thanks, guys, for letting me play in the big leagues. And, Mark, thanks for selling me your boat."
West Coast Sailing Grand Prix
ILCA 7 — Al Sargent, StFYC
The ILCA 7 fleet winner for 2025 was a longtime San Francisco Bay racer. The victor, Al Sargent, who also took time to sail in the ILCA Grand Master Worlds in Italy during the fall, clinched the season win in the final regatta of the year (StFYC's Fall Dinghy).
"2025 was a challenging racing season for me, as I had some health issues from spring through summer," Takayanagi says of his half of the championship win. "While I was able to win the first Grand Prix event, the Spring Dinghy in mid-March, I couldn't sail any local races until October. In October, I was finally able to return to racing and won the remaining two events — the Totally Dinghy at my home club RYC and the Fall Dinghy at StFYC — which allowed me to tie the overall score with Ernie. I'm really glad to share the Grand Prix title with Ernie, who's made great progress this season."
"What makes the series memorable is the wide range of conditions we race in," Sargent tells Latitude. "Everything from blustery rains in the Spring and Fall Dinghy that marked the start and end, to drifting conditions dodging ski boats at the Camellia Cup, to pea-soup fog in Half Moon Bay, to pristine Huntington Lake and Tahoe. It helps you be more adaptable as a sailor, and gives you much better stories to tell back on shore. I got pushed hard and beaten in plenty of races by Julian Soto, Elliot Drake, Peter Phelan, and Emilio Castelli. All great sailors."
William Pochereva and Brandon Mercer.
Al Sargent won the 2025 ILCA 7 season title.
Toshi Takayanagi, left, split the ILCA 6 season title with Ernie Galvan.
2025 SEASON CHAMPIONS —
Ultimate 20 Matt Boroughf Trophy — Peabody, Donna Womble, MPYC
The Ultimate 20 is a competitive one-design fleet in Northern California, won by Monterey Peninsula Yacht Club's Donna Womble on her boat Peabody this season.
"The season championship is for Ultimate 20 boats in the Northern California region that sail in at least seven one-design races," fellow Ultimate 20 racer Michael Josselyn tells Latitude. "Races include the RYC's midwinter series, the mark races for the Big Daddy and Great Pumpkin, the Tiburon Yacht Club Don Wan and Behrens regattas, the Fresno Yacht Club High Sierra Regatta, and the Pacific Coast Championship race held this year at RYC.
"A total of 12 race events were included in this year's season championship, and we had nine skippers that were eligible for scoring," Josselyn
Knarr — Kulani, Jon Perkins and Kurt Hemmingsen, StFYC
The season started out in varying conditions. No stranger to a wooden Knarr, Jon Perkins on helm and Larry Swift on trim needed a few races to understand Kulani's momentum and sensitivity to chop and velocity shifts. "Our strategy always seemed to favor pace over point, and once up to speed, Brendan Bradley on bow commanded us to the right side of the course and current lines," says Kurt Hemmingsen, co-owner and main trim on Kulani.
"Racing strategy is a philosophy," continues Hemmingsen. "I learned a lot from Jon, Larry, and Brendan this first season together. In one-design, always high and fast mode isn't necessary. We raced with the boats around us, and waited for the chance to point higher or sail faster. We worked with boats around the marks to stay ahead, and made our tactical moves when conditions offered an opportunity for gains. The high-fast mode needs the right conditions. That's not all the time.
"I'm fierce in competition, to a fault sometimes," Hemmingson tells Latitude. "I'm learning from the new Team Kulani that enjoying time together, on and off the water — and simply doing our best at all times — is what sailing is about. Why else do it, right?
continues. "We use the High Score Averaging System, and Donna had a highscore percentage of 83.3%. Michael Eisenberg sailing Toon Town was second with 73.7%. Donna and her crew were season champions last year as well. While Donna wasn't dominant in all the races, she and her team were consistently on the podium throughout the series, and she raced in the most number of events, including U20 North Americans in North Carolina.
"The perpetual season championship trophy is called the Matt Boroughf Season Championship in honor of Matt, who was an excellent U20 sailor both in his skill at the helm and his willingness to help entry-level sailors to learn the boat and its nuances," Josselyn tells us of the history of the trophy. "He passed away from cancer in 2015 at a young age, leaving behind his wife and three young children."
"Competition is stiff in the Knarr class," Hemmingsen adds. "We have an amazing camaraderie, and this year we improved communication, and strengthened the community with better tools to engage more new crew. We've seen the next generation flourish on trim, helm and showing up in the top at the finish line and regatta scoreboards.
'Kulani', co-owned by Jon Perkins and Kurt Hemmingsen, won the 2025 Knarr season.
Donna Womble's Ultimate 20, 'Peabody', ripping in the Bay.
Donna Womble
BRIAN HOOVER
That's amazing. That's what every class wants. The support from yacht clubs, sail makers, divers, and volunteers helps our growth, and we very much appreciate it. Without all of them, we couldn't enjoy racing our precious boats."
Alerion 28 — Allegro non Troppo, Bill Claussen, Rex Malott, and Jim Titus, StFYC
The Alerion 28 Fleet One Season Championship was won for the second year in a row by Allegro non Troppo (StFYC), owned by Bill Claussen, Rex Malott, and Jim Titus. They bested 20 other Alerion 28s on the Bay, with three first places in the seven-race series from April through September.
Bill, Rex, and Jim are all veterans of many Bay Area campaigns in a variety of classes. They bring decades of one-design experience and expertise to the highly competitive Alerion 28 fleet, where many races are settled by inches and many series settled by tiebreakers.
"Allegro non Troppo is always in the mix, regardless of which one of the partners is steering," says fleet captain Chris Kramer. "They are always fast and are fierce competitors."
The San Francisco Bay Alerion 28 Fleet One is the most active and competitive Alerion 28 fleet in the US, racing throughout the year, and will be hosting its first West Coast Regional Championship in May 2026 at Richmond YC.
Islander 36 — Luna Sea, Dan Knox, SBYC
The Islander 36 season championship was won by Dan Knox and his team aboard Luna Sea, sailing under the burgee of South Beach Yacht Club. Knox and the team felt that it was fitting to dedicate the season championship to former crew member Cindy Lu Surdez, who recently passed away.
"Our crew carried me over the finish line once again," Knox tells Latitude. "And it was clear to everyone racing: We were very lucky to finish ahead of Windwalker in the standings. They are a well-prepared team and we feel lucky just to have them in our fleet. Having a boat better than us to race against helps us improve our sailing. They are a friendly group, and they always wish us well before each race. Things came down to the final race of the season, which made for exciting sailing all year. You can't wish for anything more than that.
"We had a number of crew members this year, but there for most races were Rob Blendermann, Justin Hughes, Jewel McLain, David Graff, and of course, the person that held the boat together, Myphi Alloy," Knox continues. "Myphi is the type of crew member that can do everything and has the ability to help everyone on board sail better. She's the first one to run to the bow and lend a hand when there is a problem. Having a crew member that makes their teammates sail better is about the highest praise you can give someone.
"In addition, I would like to add that this championship is dedicated to our good friend Cindy Lu Surdez," Knox tells us. "We had a little eight-bells dedication to Cindy aboard Luna Sea a few weeks ago, and while she could sometimes be a real handful, she was for many years the best sailor on board our boat. It is 100% because of Cindy that no one on Luna Sea is ever allowed to overtrim a sail. The shouts of 'more curl, please' ring through the rigging.
She will forever be a part of our crew, and it is very fitting that this championship be hers."
Express 27 Long Distance — Wile E Coyote, Dan Pruzan, EYC
The Express 27 Long Distance series was won by a veteran of the class in the form of Dan Pruzan and his team on Wile E Coyote, racing under the Encinal burgee.
"This year we sailed with the regular crew of Ken Bodiley, Mike Herbert, Larry Ho, Jack Sheehan and Samantha Chiu," Pruzan tells Latitude. "While turnout was relatively low, we had some tight races that were a lot of fun."
CHRIS RAY
RICHARD EGAN
CHRISTIAN KRAMER
The Alerion 28 Fleet season champions, left to right: Jim Titus, Rex Malott, and Bill Claussen.
The 'Kulani' team after winning the 2025 Woodies Invitational.
Dan Knox and 'Sea Luna' won the 2025 Islander 36 Season Championship.
Dan Pruzan and 'Wile E Coyote' won the Express 27 Long Distance Championship.
2025 SEASON CHAMPIONS
Avila Cup (SLYC) — Second Wind, Roger Briggs, SLYC
"The Avila Cup is a perpetual trophy provided by the San Luis Yacht Club, San Luis Obispo County (SLYC is located in Avila Beach), for its members and held in trust by the Board of Directors of the SLYC. It is permanently displayed in the SLYC trophy case," Roger Briggs, the winner of the cup in 2025, tells Latitude. "The purpose of this trophy is to recognize excellence in ocean racing skills that SLYC desires to encourage.
"This year we had seven boats competing in our monthly PHRF races, May through October, using a large variety of courses that are inside and outside Port San Luis and Avila Beach," Briggs continues. "Boats included two Holder 20s, two Catalina 30s, a Westsail 32, and a Catalina 38. We ran 16 races this season, with 12 counting toward the Avila Cup (four throwouts).
"One of the Holder 20s, Fear Knot, was skippered by Kevin Williams, and he won most of the races he entered," Briggs tells us of the season. "However, he missed a couple of race days (and volunteered to fill in for our PRO J.J. Francoisse on one day) and had too many DNSs to win the Cup. He ended the season in third place, while the Catalina 38 Fat Cat won second place. SLYC's only club boat, Second Wind, is a Catalina 30, with a normal crew of four club members. At times, a couple other club members filled in for those on vacation, etc. Second Wind is skippered by Roger Briggs, but helm
duties were rotated to some degree, with Pat Mullen, Bill McInerney and Greg Jackson all taking the helm on occasion. Second Wind won the Avila Cup this year, successfully defending its win last year with the same crew. Last year was the first time the club boat has ever won the Cup.
"For the last two years, the other Catalina 30, Blondie, has had an allwomen crew (a first for SLYC), skippered by Kate McInerney, Bill's wife," Briggs continues. "In the last race of the season this year, Kate beat Second Wind, which had her hubby on board crewing. Kudos to Kate and the gals!"
One of the beautiful things about sailing is that there are so many different fleets and types of boats. We couldn't possibly cover all of them in this month's magazine, so we will be continuing this feature over the course of the next two editions of the magazine.
— latitude/fritz
PERFORMANCE FOR ALL
'Second Wind' wins the 2025 Avila Cup.
A GOOD DINGHY —
On December 31, 1999, Dena Hankins and James Lane set sail from Seattle, and they've been underway in one form or another ever since, but mostly under sail. Dena (novelist and shor story author) is an amazing navigator. James (three novels in) has been a sailor for longer than you … maybe even your kin … anyway, yeah. In 2006, they sailed from S.F. Bay to the Big Island of Hawaii. James was Latitude 38's nude centerfold that December, a story he regales strangers with to this very day. Today they are sailing their 30-ft electric sailboat around the world with their notquite-useless cat, Beluga Greyfinger.
TheDinghy is not an afterthought!
From our current vantage, safe at anchor aboard our Baba 30 electric sailboat SV SN-E Cetacea in Bermuda, it's a pleasure to recount the dinghy choices (yes, choices!) we've experienced … enjoyed … survived.
Our first boat was a Port Ludlowported William Garden Sea Wolf ketch that came with a bronze-riveted beauty of a wooden clinker rowing dinghy. We learned how to get around in the world on those two boats (beginning in Eagle Harbor and moving through the San Juans, then south to San Francisco) and, of the two, the dinghy was both safer and so much more fun. We called her Sojourner Earth and she performed as the perfect commuter vessel across
Drayton Harbor (Blaine, Birch Bay, and Semiahmoo, WA) for winter 2000-2001. Sport fishers and terrifyingly adorable 600-pound harbor seals made an adventure of every single morning crossing that bay in a winter of many zeros.
When we downsized our primary vessel from a 48-ft wooden ketch to a fiberglass Gulf 32 pilot house sloop in the San Francisco Bay Area (Emeryville, Richmond, Alameda, Oakland and San Francisco were all homes for us and our new boat in the early 2000s), we got a great deal on an 8-ft Fatty Knees, and that's when we fell in love with the rowing/sailing dinghy once again. Sojourner Earth had been a joy to row, but she was destroyed in a storm off Cape Mendocino on the way down from Eureka, so when we got another one, we put that Fatty Knees to the test, sailing and rowing in almost every condition and towing it everywhere we went.
After some months exploring India, we decided to check out the East Coast of the US. Our next boat, wintering in Norfolk, VA (before we rescued her upon our return to the US from Goa), came with a Dyer Midget, the absolute most sailing dinghy you can fit on the bow of a Rhodes Chesapeake 32. We named that dink Tinker because we considered ourselves (and totally are) itinerant working people of our world. She was like a kitty to us. She followed us everywhere. Before we started our decade of yoyo-ing the Eastern Seaboard, we gave Tinker a loving rebuild that strengthened her up but also made her a whole lot heavier. We'd already discovered that two 200-pound adults were too many for her sail plan, but that poor boat spent amazing amounts of time being rowed by us: laundry, groceries, water … a few scant, brave inches of freeboard keeping the water out and the people/stuff in.
We towed Tinker more often than not. We were coastal cruising throughout the 2010s and we could drop that hook within rowing distance to most of our destinations. And those destinations got farther and farther away with each row. Yeah, so the anchorage in Rockland, ME, is pretty far from the dinghy dock, but we powered through that row so many times we didn't even feel it by the time we sailed out of that anchorage. The only time conditions proved tougher than the person on
our oars was in Provincetown, MA, in an October nor'easter to remember. I (Dena) think that I may have made it in other gloves, but the knitted woolen mittens chafed my hands to blisters before we got out of the mooring field (a mile away from the boat). I turned back for that All-Star Karaoke at the Governor Bradford … oh, the joy and pain! After 60 bucks in food and three-anda-half hours of '80s-hit decimation (and yes, I do mean that one out of every 10 songs got totally murdered), we finally made it home to our anchored boat a mile-and-a-half to windward. It was the first and only time we've ever had to turn back.
The prudent rower can plan for the weather. Have that extra drink to let conditions settle or go in a bit later in the day. And then there was yesterday.
We went from a super-classic plastic in the 1961 Rhodes Chesapeake 32 to an '80s-modern Baba 30 and ended up with a DE-flatable dinghy with a 2.5 horsepower infernal combustion outboard. This is not our style, and on our way down to Key West from a drastically bad winter in Lynn, MA, we were desperate to get back to that good old rowing-dinghy lifestyle. In those turquoise southern Floridian waters, we bought another 8-ft Fatty Knees from a friend. She was a great deal partly because of the 3-inch hole in the stem. We rebuilt that beautiful sailing dinghy on the deck of our 30-ft sailing vessel between West Palm Beach and Key West, where she was launched and ultimately named Tursiops. She's a pleasure to row in almost any conditions … almost.
We put Tursiops on Cetacea's bow and electric-sailed through the first leg in our electric circumnavigation of the planet Earth. Tursiops nestled there like a champ through every sail option there was for the 13 days, 3 hours, and 30 minutes it took us get to
Dena Hankins sailing 'Tinker', a 7-ft Dyer Midget, in Somes Sound, ME, 2015.
James Lane as he appeared in Latitude 38's December 2006 issue.
DENA HANKINS
JAMES LANE
DON'T CAST OFF WITHOUT ONE
St. George's, Bermuda. And after clearing in and anchoring, launching Tursiops was the very first thing we did.
Some time later, as we waited out Tropical Storm Don spinning its bigol'-self out in the middle of the Atlantic flow…
We were sitting at the bus stop in St. George's when we made the mistake of checking our tech for the oncoming weather. "Um, I think we gotta get back to the boat! Um, now!"
"K." The phones were lit up with weather alerts. And we'd left the butterfly hatch in the OPEN position back at the anchorage. Yeah.
Fast-walking through the maze of Bermudian alleyways, we got hooked by a museum. What else could do that thing: hook us with a storm between us and our "at anchor"?
"Wow! This place is cool! Remember the dire weather?"
We didn't. Then it started to rain.
The docent was closing doors and windows all over the period-correct house when we remembered that our poor cat was probably being rained on over there in the harbor. We stowed the tech in the rubberized backpack and sloshed down the sodden streets. Tourists eyed us uncertainly from their hiding places under the eaves and inside the public bathrooms, but we powered on in the drenching rain.
Tursiops had been moved by a powerboat (grr-argh) and was tied bizarrely. It took a little extra attention and work to get her free of the dinghy dock, and by the time we were off, the true strength of the wind began to reveal itself.
Oh, dear. This could be a big deal. At least we're traveling downwind to get back to Cetacea!
We made that two-tenths of a mile seconds before the unthinkable thing happened. Cetacea slewed north as we blew south, and just like that, we were four boat lengths leeward of our home. James scrambled for a foothold in the new situation. I (Dena) pushed my feet against his and said, "Pull now!"
I (James) did. It was hard. "We're gaining, but it's going to be a while." "You're getting there; just keep going." "Don't look, just row." I looked. I shouldn't have.
The couple on the sloop next to us geared up in their foulies and maintained an alert watch on their deck. They were ready for something — not sure what they thought it might be — but when I grabbed the ladder and then Dena lifted herself out of the dinghy holding the painter, a ragged and earnest cheer welcomed us to the success of arriving home alive.
This was life and death, and we'd done it again. Because that is what life is about: Living, and making it a part of the story of our lives. We witness for neighbors and they witness for us, and we're all ready to save someone if need be.
We're proud to continue to save ourselves and each other, but it's good to have compatriots.
Now we point the boat at the Azores, leg two of our electric circumnavigation of our planet. Bring!
— james lane & dena hankins
The author rowing in Marathon, FL, 2023.
Left: 'Sojourner Earth', 2000, Eagle Harbor, WA. Right: 'Ol' Fatty', an 8-ft Fatty Knees w/o sailing rig, being towed behind SV 'Sapien' with Mount Tam astern, 2005.
JAMES LANE
It'sgetting hard to find crew who know what to do with a spinnaker pole. All the hot young race crew are sailing on the hot new boats with asymms tacked to the end of a bowsprit. My crew has suggested a retrofit, but my boat was designed during the dark years of the IOR, and it's just a little too heavy to bring the apparent wind forward on a run. So I have to square the chute back with a pole.
On the other hand, bearing off to a run is one of the secret pleasures of sailing an older boat. The wind goes aft, the air seems to warm up, the deck stays dry, and the crew is rewarded for the bash to windward on the previous leg. Not so with a fast sprit boat, where the apparent wind is hardly ever aft of the beam.
"Like, you're just showing your age, Max," Lee Helm scolded me while I was browsing some recent photos on the yacht club bulletin board of Transpac racers crossing the Diamond Head finish line. I hadn't realized that I was actually thinking out loud, and Lee had been eavesdropping from close astern.
"Hey, you still get to fly the asymm from a pole and sail deep on the way to Hawaii," she assured me.
"When the wind is up and the swells are surfable, there's a point on the ocean polars where a deep run is best VMG. It complicates the jibes a little compared to a symmetrical jibe, but, like, that's what good crew are for."
broach coach with the pole tripped than some of these kids have on the water," he boasted.
"What is this 'FTCF' scoring?" I asked, looking up from the Notice of Race. I naively thought there might be a simple answer.
"It's 'Forecast Time Correction Factor,'" Lee answered. "The latest attempt to, like, level the playing field between boats with different characteristics. The ratings are modified depending on the forecast wind speed and direction for the race course, and that info along with each boat's polars is used to modify the rating."
"I remember when they tried that for Big Boat Series," I said. "It was fraught."
"How can you enjoy a race when you don't even know what your rating is till the race is over?" the old foredeck hand complained. "How do you tell who's winning? And by how much? Not knowing who's ahead and who's behind drains all the competitive juice from racing."
"And that's not the worst of it," he continued before I could ask for more details. "The wind speeds they used were never really objectively measured.
"Does this new system avoid those problems?" I asked.
"Sort of," Lee hedged. "It's not based on measurements during the race. It assumes the forecast wind field is correct, and then calculates the optimum route and best possible time for each boat in those conditions using each boat's polars. The winner is the boat that has the best time compared to their predicted time if they sailed a perfect race."
"I don't think that will ever work for Bay races," I said. "Even the high-resolution GRIB files miss a lot of the major geographic effects."
"Back in the day, when we didn't have daily check-ins, we had no idea how we were doing in an ocean race. The moment of truth came when we made the last turn around the breakwater and saw the guest dock of the club hosting the finish line."
Sprit envy may have been part of it, but there were other things making me think "new boat." If I was ever going to race my own boat to Hawaii, I needed a boat that would get me there before the parties were over. One of our members, a foredeck specialist and veteran of more Transpacs and Pacific Cups than he can count, had kindly stapled all the pages of the Notice of Race together and hung them from a nail next to the bulletin board for easy perusal. He noticed me reading it and came over from the bar to join the conversation.
"I got more time logged steering a
It was too easy for the RC to play favorites, even though they tried hard to at least give the appearance of being unbiased. There was that one year when they used anemometer measurements at the marks at the beginning and end of each leg to get an average wind speed for the leg. No favoritism allowed. The trouble was the leg that ended outside the Gate in the wind shadow of Point Diablo, where it was shallow enough to anchor a mark. But the mark was right in a wind shadow. So the average wind speed for the leg was way too low, and since the Notice of Race did not allow any modifications from the anemometer readings, the leg was scored all wrong."
"It was originally developed for Transpac," said the bowman. "For when boats start on different days. Sometimes all the starters on one day have a good breeze to get clear of the inshore calm area quickly, and some days there's a 'Catalina Eddy' with a day or more of light headwinds. The boats starting on the slow day never have much of a chance of beating the boats that start in a good breeze."
"But doesn't this still make boats race without knowing their ratings?" I asked.
"Here's how it works," explained Lee. "First, you need a good wind forecast in digital form. Transpac uses the HRRR, or High Resolution Rapid Refresh, up to the longitude of Point Conception. Then it switches to GFS, Global Forecast System, for the rest of the race. Next, you need a routing program, like Expedition, to work out the optimal route. This is done separately for each boat, because it's based on each boat's polars, which come from their rating certificates."
FORECASTING TIME
"And they get the ratings, how?" I asked.
"If you know the course distance and, like, the theoretical elapsed time for each boat in the forecast wind and current predictions, you can compute the average speed for a boat that sails a perfect race. The ratio of that speed to the arbitrarily chosen scratch boat's theoretical speed is the 'Forecast Time Correction Factor.' The forecast and the routing calcs are locked in before the start, and the list of ratings is broadcast to the fleet. This way you do know your rating during the race."
Lee had to repeat this one more time for the procedure to sink in.
"I'm not sure I like the underlying philosophy," I said. "It tries to remove all the randomness from the race, as if it were a one-design fleet. I like the fact that sometimes different boats have an advantage due to finding the weather that favors them. This new system works against the concept that 'every dog has its day.'"
"I guess 'dogs getting their days' is important for a PHRF beer can fleet,"
remarked the foredeck guy. "Gotta keep the newbies in the game. But for a major race, most of the sailors are world class and they want the test to be as fair as possible."
"Even still," observed Lee, "the randomness isn't, like, entirely gone. What if the forecast is wrong? Like the last Transpac. The Tuesday starters got away clean. The Thursday starters had to deal with that Catalina Eddy and lost more than a day trying to get past the outer islands. It was much worse for them than predicted by HRRR. And then, like, late in the race, the actual conditions can deviate from the forecast. Maybe not a big deal for the fast boats that finish in less than a week, but the boats I get to race can take 14 days or more to get to the islands, and the forecast hardly ever gets it right that far in advance. I think FTCF still needs work."
"How would you fix it?" I asked, knowing I was probably in for the equivalent of a doctoral dissertation.
"Don't rely on a forecast!" Lee exclaimed. "I mean, like, sure, you need
the forecast to set the initial TCFs. But as the race progresses, use the initialization data, which is ground truth as granular as anyone can know it. That's done every hour for HRRR, and every 12 hours for GFS. Each time the actual conditions are updated, run new ratings from that point in time. At the end of the race, the winner will be the boat that sailed the best race in the actual conditions instead of the probably wrong, forecast conditions."
"Ah, but then we're back to not knowing our ratings till the end of the race," the veteran foredeck hand pointed out.
"Not really," said Lee. "We still get our ratings at the start, and if the forecast is accurate, the ratings don't change. All this system does is make corrections to ratings — usually small corrections — to reflect what the weather actually was during the race. Like, if the forecast is good, then it's exactly the same as FTCF."
"What do you call this kind of scoring?" I asked.
"Hadn't thought of that," Lee confessed. "How about 'Corrected
Usually, the fast boats, starting last, are well ahead late in the race. But this year, most of the slow boats, starting first, had the pleasure of leading the fleet to the finish line thanks to the "Catalina Eddy" at start days two and three. This should happen more often — the small-boat divisions need a bigger head start.
MAX EBB
Forecast TCF,' or CFTCF?"
"Another thing that's changing," added the old foredeck crew, "is realtime tracking. YB tracker was available with no time delay in the last race, and thanks to mandatory AIS broadcasting and Starlink, any crew with a smartphone can see all the AIS hits in real time even when they're hiked out on the windward rail."
"I'm not sure that's such a good thing," I said. "Back in the day, when we didn't have daily check-ins, we had no idea how we were doing in an ocean race. The moment of truth came when we made the last turn around the breakwater and saw the guest dock of the club hosting the finish line. If the dock was empty, we'd done great; if the dock was full, we were close to last. But these days it's hard to keep the crew racing hard after we drop into the bottom half in the standings. When you don't know, you can imagine you're doing well and the crew keeps the pedal down."
time tracking either," said Lee. "But it was actually more fun that way. Transpac was like a very long dinghy race:
"I like the fact that sometimes different boats have an advantage due to finding the weather that favors them. This new system works against the concept that 'every dog has its day.'"
We could see where every other boat in the fleet was and how fast they were going, and when they tacked or jibed, just like in a Bay race. And FTCF made it almost as if all boats had the same rating, at least in theory. It was almost like racing in a competitive one-design fleet
on the Bay, except that it lasted for 10 days."
The yacht club has a box on the bar with a collection of donated binoculars, all of them broken in some way. But there was a new contribution that sort of worked. While Lee was talking, I picked it up and scanned the part of the Bay that we could see from the club.
A large cluster of white sails, unmistakably a tradition-bound one-design keelboat class that doesn't allow carbon, had just started another race in their championship series. I felt a pang of jealousy. They were out racing in a competitive fleet in perfect weather, no ratings to argue about, and all the competitors in sight of each other. I think any of those skippers or crew would say a championship race in a one-design fleet is the greatest skill test in sailing. And there I was just sitting at the yacht club bar.
Maybe I don't really have sprit envy after all.
— max ebb
BrisbaneMrna-Hh 05-22-nb
BrisbaneMrna-Hh 08-21-mp
BrisbaneMrna-HhBrisbaneMrna-Hh03-22-nb 01-22-mp
FRIENDLY STAFF & LOCATION
When you arrive, you'll know it's right GENEROUS ROOM TO NAVIGATE 75 foot wide fairways and channel access SPECTACULAR ACCOMMODATIONS
Convenient parking, Bay Trail access, picnic areas, private showers & laundry, Wi-Fi, and Sierra Pt. Y.C.
COMPETITIVE rateS starting at $8.67/foot
Stop by to see what we can do for you & your boat
From Hwy 101, take the Sierra Point Pkwy exit and follow the signs to the marina.
400 Sierra Point Parkway Brisbane, CA 94005
www.brisbaneca.org (650)583-6975
harbormaster@brisbaneca.org
BORN TO DREDGE
Lind Marine is proud to announce it has launched an entire NEW FLEET of marina and homeowner dredging equipment.
Lind Marine Added Capabilities
Fleet of 4 new dump scows designed to fit in all marinas and homeowner docks
New electric clam shell dredge, ABS loadline, designed to dig out slips up to 90’ long
Pile driving, dock repair, seawall repair and installation
In house permitting department
Survey boat with brand new state of the art single beam system
Small and large vessel salvage
Full service shipyard
THE RACING
The end of October and beginning of November sees most fleets wind their seasons down, as seen in the Fall Invitational. This time of year also sees special one-off regattas sailed, like the Great Pumpkin, Don Trask International Masters, Lipton Cup, and Fall Dinghy. Read about all this and more in the December Racing Sheet, and be sure to check out the first part of our annual season champs feature!
SDYC Hosts Don Trask International Masters Regatta
The San Diego Yacht Club (SDYC) hosted the 2025 Don Trask International Masters Regatta between October 17 and 19. The regatta, recently renamed in honor of the late, great West Coast sailing giant Don Trask, featured 12 elite teams from various yacht clubs around the country and around the world. The regatta was sailed in J/105s.
Racing was incredibly tight, with just nine points separating the top five in the final standings, and four points separating the top three. Chris Raab and his team, sailing under the burgees of Newport Harbor Yacht Club (NHYC) and Alamitos Bay Yacht Club (ABYC), came out victorious, totaling 59 points from 12 races.
Coming into the final day of the regatta, Raab wasn't even in the top three, but managed to come out on top with a strong final day. Tracy Usher (StFYC), who was leading the regatta coming into the final day, fell off the podium entirely.
"Getting off the start line and keeping my head in the boat really helped us win," Raab says, per the SDYC press release. "Morgan Reeser is a great
tactician and I've known all the guys on my crew for some 30-40 years, which makes a difference; I showed up with a lot of talent. The competition was as good as it gets, especially with Hardesty and Doyle on [John] Dane's boat — it was hard to beat him. I think this and the Lipton Cup are the two biggest West Coast regattas we have, and the San Diego Yacht Club does such an incredible job running both these events. It's an honor to be added to the Don Trask International Masters Regatta trophy."
Raab recorded three bullets in the regatta (in races two, eight and nine), and three more top-three finishes. Second place went to John Dane with 62 points, sailing for Pass Christian Yacht Club (PCYC) in Mississippi. SFYC's Don Jesberg finished one point behind Dane in third place with 63 points. Jesberg and team were perhaps the most consistent at finishing in the top five, but back-to-back second-to-last-place finishes in races six and seven hurt.
"This is my best finish for sure," Jesberg says of his team's performance, once again per the SDYC press release. "We were 11 points out of first going into the last day, and had all the pieces fallen into place we could have won, but
it was tough: In one race we went from third to ninth, which cost us six points, and there was the differential. We're happy to finish so close to two very good teams. My crew is a great group to sail with; I love these guys."
This year's regatta was the 42nd sailing of the event, which has been hosted by SDYC since 2012 (after previously being sailed at StFYC). It is the first time the event was sailed with its new name honoring its founder, Trask, who passed away on September 29 this year.
SDYC DON TRASK INTERNATIONAL MASTERS REGATTA, 10/17-19, (12r/0t)
J/105 — 1) Chris Raab, NHYC/ABYC, 59 points; 2) John Dane, Pass Christian YC, 62; 3) Don Jesberg, SFYC, 63. (12 boats) Full results at www.sdyc.org
Pumpkins, Pirates, and the Great Pumpkin Regatta
The sky over San Francisco Bay had that stubborn gray cast that only sailors can love: low clouds, cool rain, and a wind that refused to blow from its usual quarter. But if there's one thing the Great Pumpkin Regatta teaches you, it's to expect the unexpected. This late-October weekend was no exception: wet, wild, and wonderfully
A crowded start at the committee boat during the Don Trask International Masters Regatta. Right: Chris Raab and his team won the 2025 Don Trask International Masters Regatta, which saw the top three teams separated by just four points.
unpredictable. There was no dampening the spirit of the sailors heading out for the Great Pumpkin Regatta, the Richmond Yacht Club's annual blend of competition, costumes, and chaos.
We cast off from Sausalito in pouring rain, with coffee mugs clutched tight against the weather. The familiar skyline looked muted under low clouds as we motored out past the marker headed toward the Berkeley Circle, the Golden Gate shrouded in fog behind us.
By the time we reached the starting
area out at the Berkeley Circle, the water was alive with motion. Dozens of boats hovered and jockeyed, their crews wrapped in foul weather gear and Halloween spirit in equal measure.
As we were in the last fleet for this course (fleet Echo), we had the benefit of watching the other fleet starts. The wind was out of the southwest for the first race, with the windward marks out toward Treasure Island. Wind was a moderate 12-15 knots with on-and-off light rain.
When the starting horn blared, the Bay answered with gusts that kept trimmers on their toes. The wind's strange direction made every leg feel like a puzzle.
Boats surged across the chop, their spinnakers fighting the squalls like bright flags in a storm. Crews to soaked to care and too determined to quit.
We had a decent start. National Biscuit (a custom Schumacher 36 built in 1989) dug in and powered to windward.
The first leg was a battle against the elements. Rain peppered the deck, and the wind's odd angle made trimming sails feel like solving a moving riddle. Every tack demanded precision.
We had two laps on this particular race, the first of what would be three races that day.
In between the first and second races, the wind changed direction and started coming from the more usual northwest direction, which meant the committee boat postponed briefly to allow the windward marks to be moved.
The second race was only a one-lapper, and the third race was a two-lapper. Interestingly, there was a two-buoy gate near the finish line that all the boats had to pass between and round to port on the first lap of each race, but
Picturesque downwind action in the 2025 Don Trask International Masters Regatta at SDYC.
Jeremy Haydock and his team on 'National Biscuit' racing in the 2025 Great Pumpkin Regatta.
THE RACING
not on the second and final lap of each race. All the roundings for each race were to port for that day.
Despite the conditions — or maybe because of them — there was laughter. Crews shouted encouragement across the water, trading good-natured jabs between waves.
By late in the afternoon, the rain eased and the party began. The Richmond Yacht Club glowed from within — strings of lights reflecting off puddles on the deck, the sound of live music spilling into the night air.
The theme, "Pirates of the Caribbean," came to life in grand style. The clubhouse filled with swashbucklers and sirens, peg-legged sailors and a few convincingly rum-warmed Jack Sparrows. Amid the revelry, our National Biscuit crew had one more mission: to celebrate our skipper's birthday in true pirate fashion, complete with a sparkler-candle cake.
The band struck up The Beatles' "Birthday," and soon the whole room was singing "Happy Birthday" to Dennis Webb. His grin said it all — Dennis, grinning, took it all in with the kind of joy that defines this regatta — unbothered by the rain, surrounded by friends, and completely in his element.
— jeremy haydock
RYC GREAT PUMPKIN REGATTA, 10/25, (3r/0t)
EXPRESS 27 — 1) Freaks on a Leash, Katie Cornetta, 3 points; 2) Fired Up!, John Morrison, 8; 3) Wile E Coyote, Dan Pruzan, 9. (9 boats) EXPRESS 37 — 1) Golden Moon, Michael Laport, 4 points; 2) Expeditious, Bartz Schneider, 6; 3) Spindrift V, Andy Schwenk, 9. (6 boats) J/24 — 1) Unknown, Jasper Van Vliet, 4 points; 2) Downtown Uproar, Darren Cumming, 5; 3) Tenacious Cuttlefish, Brandon & Addison Mercer, 10. (5 boats)
MELGES 24 — 1) Chop Chop, Matt Hamilton, 3 points; 2) Daredevil, Tim Anto, 7; 3) Bob, Spencer Griscom, 8. (3 boats)
ALERION 28 — 1) Sweet De, Christian Kramer, 6 points; 2) Jewel, David Britt, 7; 3) Zenaida, Jennifer McKenna, 9. (5 boats)
ULTIMATE 20 — 1) Cinderella Story, John & Jennifer Andrew, 4 points; 2) Toon Town, Michael Eisenberg, 8; 3) Peabody, Donna Womble, 9. (8 boats)
PHRF A — 1) eXpresso, Xp-44, Jim Lussier, 4 points; 2) Astra, Farr 400, Simon Phillips, 8; 3) Nuckelavee, Melges 32, Mark Kennedy, 11. (7 boats)
PHRF B — 1) Reverie, J/109, John Arens, 5 points; 2) Lightspeed, Wylie 39, Gilles Combrisson, 6; 3) Jeannette, Frers 40, Bob Novy, 7; (9 boats)
PHRF D — 1) Ravenette, J/88, Brice Dunwoodie, 3 points; 2) Inconceivable, J/88, Steven Gordon, 6; 3) Wowla, J/100, Bob Walden/Lori Tewksbury, 10; (4 boats)
PHRF E — 1) Checkered Past, Wyliecat 39, Kim & Anna Desenberg, 3 points; 2) Ahi, Santana 35, Andy Newell, 8; 3) Another Girl, Alerion 38, Cinde Lou Delmas, 8; (7 boats)
PHRF G — 1) Can O'Whoopass, Cal 20, Richard vonEhrenkrook, 4.5 points; 2) High and Dry, Santana 22, Igor Polevoy, 6.5; 3) Adagio, Santana 22, David Keller, 9. (4 boats)
PHRF F — 1) Lickety Split, SC27, Rick & Jill Raduziner, 5 points; 2) Kangaroo Jockey, J/70, Peter Cameron, 6; 3) Slight Disorder, Moore 24, Noah Goldman, 10. (7 boats)
MULTIHULLS — 1) Bottle Rocket, Seacart 30, David Schumann; 2) Flux, Seacart 30, Jeremy Boyette; 3) Ma's Rover, F-31r, John Donovan. (10 boats)
Full results at www.richmondyc.org
Classic Yachts Wrap Up Season at the Jessica Cup
Among the troves of sailing cup treasures at the St. Francis Yacht Club (StFYC) is the Jessica Cup, a gleaming silver beauty marked with the words "46th Annual Regatta, New York Yacht Club, June 18, 1891."
For more than 30 years, Master Mariners Benevolent Association (MMBA) racers have competed on San Francisco Bay waters for this touchstone. In the late 1800s, a prestigious NYYC member donated this prize to his club in honor of his daughter, but a few years later, after she angered her father by taking up with an unsuitable suitor, the prize was packed and shipped west to StFYC. The Jessica Cup Regatta is open to all classic boats of traditional design and construction, a minimum of 30-ft on deck; the Bird class; and boats in a Spirit of Tradition class.
Racers tagged it a stunning fall day on the Bay, with a big ebb current and light northwest winds. Prior to
'Water Witch' won her division at the 2025 Jessica Cup.
Who doesn't love a good crew costume? "Mine! Mine! Mine!"
race one, 17 member vessels could be seen, including ketch, yawl, gaff-rigged schooner and sloop. In Classic Marconi I race action, Water Witch (SFYC/ MMBA/PSPYC) took honors, followed by Neil Gibbs on Kay of Göteborg (SYC/ MMBA), Kennett Wadsworth with Wiletie (PSPYC), then Nicholas Raggio on Alpha (StFYC).
Water Witch, skippered by John and Gena Egelston, led from the start and went on to win both runs for the day, securing the first overall plus the 2025 Jessica Cup Perpetual class. With these victories logged, plus firsts at the Great Schooner Cup and Belvedere Cup in the summer, the Egelstons netted the grand 2025 Bay Championship Series trophy.
Two other Bay Championship Series trophies were bestowed that day: Marconi II went to Bill and Kathleen Claussen aboard Cuckoo (MMBA), while Gaff division went to Brigadoon (StFYC) with Terry and Lindsey Klaus. The Klaus duo also earned big on October 18, with first and second finishes on the water, earning them the Yankee Cup Perpetual.
Shares Terry Klaus, "Race PRO Tony Chargin did an excellent job getting both races set for three classes in the prevailing conditions." Klaus points out that the ebb was so strong that some boats that had gotten beyond the start area had a difficult time getting back in time for the start countdown. He goes on to say a few boats couldn't finish due to light winds — plus that strong ebb current. Sailing to a second in the Gaff division was Makani Kai (MMBA) and skipper/owner Ken Inouye. For Classic Marconi II (under 40-ft), 10 came to the start line, but it was Richard and Mark Pearce on Fjaer (SFYC) who nailed a
win, taking the Rascal Cup Perpetual Trophy. Don Taylor on Farallone Clipper VIP (RYC) earned second, and rascal Jim Borger of Neja (MMBA) claimed third.
Stacked aside others in this division, newly elected Bird class president Will Campbell on Hummingbird (MMBA) enthused about seeing three Birds at the season closer; he's been working to revitalize and rally more to compete. Smiling, Campbell says competitors overcame a bit of course confusion in race one, not being sure where the first mark was.
"We were sent to Little Harding, but the sailing instructions didn't name the buoy, aside from something along the lines of 'green buoy 1/4 mile NW of Harding Rock (HR).' I watched leaders all go to HR, then take a turn west — but not to a second mark at Hank Easom." Within the Bird fleet that day, Cuckoo (MMBA) and Oriole (SFYC) did well in race one, but finished deep in the ranks for race two, "after both making a big tactical error," quips Campbell, who admits to have followed them knowing full well they had done something not quite right. "We should have just gone straight across the Bay to Little Harding. Instead, all three Birds went west to near the Golden Gate Bridge, then pushed against full power of the outgoing current from Raccoon Strait up to Little Harding. That was an oops."
With two race runs completed, each lasting between one and two hours, more than 120 guests sauntered into the St. Francis YC in the late afternoon for revelry, rewards, a welcoming buffet and free beer. The Jessica Cup marks the season finale to a three-part series, with other regattas being the Master Mariners Regatta in May and the
Belvedere Classic Regatta and Great San Francisco Schooner Race in August.
— martha blanchfield
StFYC JESSICA CUP, 10/8 (2r/0t)
CLASSIC GAFF — 1) Brigadoon, Gaff Schooner, Terry Klaus, 3 points; 2) Makani Kai, Angelman Sea Spirit, Ken Inouye, 5; 3) Aida, Gaff Schooner, Andy Flick, 6. (4 boats)
CLASSIC MARCONI 1 (40 ft +) — 1) Water Witch, P Class Cutter, John Egelston, 3 points; 2) Kay of Göteborg, Yawl, Neil Gibbs, 4; 3) Wiletie, Schooner, Kennett Wadsworth, 5. (4 boats)
CLASSIC MARCONI 2 (under 40 ft) — 1) Fjaer, IOD, Richard & Mark Pearce, 3 points; 2) VIP, Farallone Clipper, Don Taylor, 5; 3) Neja, Lapworth 32/Dasher, Jim Borger, 7. (12 boats) Full results at www.stfyc.com
StFYC Hosts Fall Invitational and Moore 24 PCCs
On October 18-19, St. Francis Yacht Club (StFYC) hosted one of its final keelboat regattas of 2025 in the form of the Fall Invitational. It was a busy weekend on the water at the Cityfront, with two other regattas also being run by StFYC (the Jessica Cup on Saturday for classic yachts and the Joe Logan on Sunday for Mercurys).
The Fall Invitational featured four different one-design keelboat fleets: Knarrs, Folkboats, Alerion 28s and Moore 24s. The Moore 24 fleet saw the biggest turnout of 15 boats, as the regatta also served as the 2025 Pacific Coast Championship (PCC) for the class.
Due to the other regattas being hosted by St. Francis at the same time, racing for the classes was not on the Cityfront racecourse usually used by StFYC whenever Knarrs and Folkboats are involved. The starting line both days was just west of Alcatraz.
Saturday's conditions were unusual, to say the least. Very little wind was initially forecast. This forecast proved to be wrong. There was a sailable breeze, just not from the usual westerly direction. A light northerly held all day, allowing three races to be sailed for each class. The wind direction meant that the strong Bay currents would be crosscurrents, adding a new element to the racing that is not often seen on San Francisco Bay.
In the first race, the current was a dying flood, which turned a strong,
CHRIS
RAY
Light wind action at the 2025 Jessica Cup.
THE RACING
building ebb for races two and three on the day. With the breeze being quite light (it stayed between four and seven knots for most of the day), boats struggled to make progress against the current on the offset leg after the starboard roundings. At multiple points, entire fleets were sandwiched between the weather mark and offset.
Sunday's conditions were reminiscent of a summer day of racing on the Bay, with somewhat foggy skies and a strong westerly that built into the high teens. Three races were sailed for the Knarrs, Folkboats and Alerions on Sunday, and two for the Moores, with one of them being a distance race.
When all was said and done, the winning Moore 24 (and therefore 2025 Moore 24 Pacific Coast Champion) was Rowan and Vikki Fennell's Paramour (SFYC). The team recorded a net total of six points from their five races (dropping a fifth-place finish in race two). They won three races.
"The conditions proved tricky with light northerly winds on Saturday with 3-knot crosscurrent in both directions, throughout the day," Vikki Fennell tells Latitude. "The crew was a Fennell sandwich with Rowan [and myself] at opposite ends of the boat, long-time family friend John Kernot trimming, and special guest pit boss and good buddy Jessica Brownlow in the middle. The crew remarked how over all our years of sailing we had never sailed in a northerly in the Alcatraz/Central Bay race area.
"The current was the main character all weekend," Fennell continues. "Sniffing out the good water and calling and managing laylines was the name of the
game. Race one Rowan spotted some residual flood and went left as much of the fleet chose the right side. With clear air and staying up-current we were able to get ahead and stay ahead for the duration. Races two and three saw the ebb set in and the race committee switch from port roundings to starboard roundings at the top mark. Match racing earlier in the year proved helpful to be able to quickly switch gears on the bow.
"Racing was super-tight, and it was so great to have solid newer teams mixing it up with legends like Morgan Larson and crew on the beautifully restored Tonopah Low.… The icing on the cake for the weekend was that rear commodore Pam Healy, who taught both Rowan and Nathaniel how to sail in the SFYC Junior Program, presented us with the championship trophy. Huge thanks to StFYC for hosting a superfun event. And thank you to all our fellow competitors. It's always such a treat to race amongst great competitors and friends."
Behind Paramour in second was Stephen Bourdow's Mooregasm (SCYC) with 10 points, and in third was Morgan Larson's Tonopah Low (StFYC/ SCYC/HRYC) with 11 points.
The Knarr, Alerion and Folkboat fleets all sailed six races, one more than the Moores. In the Knarr class, Viva (SFYC), skippered by Alden Grimes, was victorious, with a net six total points. Grimes was filling in at the helm for Don Jesberg, who was sailing the Don Trask International Masters Regatta. Grimes and team won the first two races on Saturday to take an early lead, and then after a 10th in race three that would become their drop, they finished top three in each race Sunday to win the event.
Second in the Knarr fleet went to Niuhi (StFYC), skippered not by Randy Hecht, rather Ryan Treais. The top two teams of the regatta were all very youthful, a good sign for the Knarr fleet. In third was Chris Perkins' Three Boys and a Girl (StFYC). Perkins tied Niuhi on points, but lost on tiebreaker.
The Alerion 28 fleet was won by Fred Paxton and Arnie Quan in Zenaida (RYC) with a net total of six points. Peter Jeal dominated the Folkboat fleet in Polperro (BVBC) with a net total of six as well. — fritz
StFYC FALL INVITATIONAL/MOORE 24 PACIFIC COAST CHAMPIONSHIP 10/18-19 (6r/1t)
ALERION 28 — 1) Zenaida, Fred Paxton/ Arnie Quan, 6 points; 2) Resilience, Kersey Clausen, 11; 3) Sweet De, Christian Kramer/Ian Charles, 15. (7 boats)
The crew aboard 'Paramour', from left to right: Vikki Fennell on bow, Nathaniel Fennell in the pit, Rowan Fennell helming, and John Kernot trimming.
VIKKI FENNELL
CHRIS
RAY
The team from 'Paramour' with the 2025 Moore 25 PCC Trophy.
KNARR — 1) Viva, Don Jesberg/Alden Grimes, 9 points; 2) Niuhi, Randy Hecht, 16; 3) Three Boys and a Girl, Chris Perkins, 16. (13 boats)
MOORE 24 PACIFIC COAST CHAMPIONSHIP — 1) Paramour, Rowan Fennell, 6 points; 2) Mooregasm, Stephen Bourdow, 10; 3) Tonopah Low, Morgan Larson, 11; 4) Firefly, Joel Turmel, 13. (15 boats)
Full results at www.stfyc.com
The Home Team Wins 2025 Lipton Cup
The 2025 Lipton Cup was sailed between October 24 and 26 at San Diego Yacht Club (SDYC), marking the 110th edition of the prestigious, invite-only regatta. Twelve yacht club teams competing in J/105s loaned by club members comprised the fleet. The competitors featured an array of Californian clubs, as well as yacht clubs as far east as the New York Yacht Club and the Rye, NY, American Yacht Club (AYC), and as far south as Club de Yates de Acapulco (CdYdA) in Mexico.
In a format reminiscent of a high school or college sailing event, teams rotated through all the boats in the fleet across 12 races, in order to ensure that the racing was as fair as possible. A temporary floating dock was brought out to the race course in order to streamline rotations.
Racing was competitive and results were volatile throughout the regatta. Seven of the 12 teams throughout the regatta won at least one race, and every single team had at least one bottomthree finish.
When all was said and done, it was the home team of SDYC, skippered by
Jake La Dow, that took home the Lipton Cup. It took all 12 races, with team SDYC winning a back and forth with fellow Southern California powerhouse Newport Harbor Yacht Club (NHYC), skippered by Justin Law.
SDYC consistently finished races between second and sixth in the first five races of the regatta before recording their first bottom-half finish of the event with an eighth in race six. The team made their push to the top of the podium in races eight and nine, recording back-to-back bullets. La Dow and team then hit a road bump in the third-to-last and penultimate races of the event, finishing ninth and eighth in races 10 and 11, respectively.
Following those two challenging results, NHYC held a slim lead going into the final race. SDYC managed to pull out a fifth-place finish in the final race, and NHYC finished 10th, giving the San Diegans 54 points to NHYC's 57. The win marked the fifth straight year that SDYC has won the Lipton Cup.
"At the beginning of the day, we had a little bit of a lead on the fleet other than Newport Harbor," La Dow said of the final day of racing, per the SDYC regatta press release. "And so our eyes were set on them. We didn't necessarily want to engage them aggressively in the start, but we wanted to keep aware of them on the race course. We found ourselves both toward the back of the pack in race
one, and we ended up putting a couple of points on them. Both of us finishing deep opened up the field for Coronado and New York to be more in the mix, which wasn't part of the plan. Race two, we didn't quite get off the line very well, and we lost a little bit of that lead, but were still in the fight. In race three we had a good start, just enough to be ahead of Newport early in the race. And we got into a controlling position and it was close the whole way, but we were just able to stay in front and control the rest of the race. It was very close, and Newport Harbor did extremely well."
"As always, the Lipton Cup is one of the best events a sailor can do all year," NHYC's Law said, again per the SDYC press release. "We always look forward to coming back. A huge shoutout to my team. We're always trying to push the limits. I think we accomplished making San Diego nervous, which is always my goal."
— fritz
SDYC LIPTON CUP, 10/24-26, (12r/0t)
J/105 — 1) San Diego Yacht Club, Jake La Dow, 54 points; 2) Newport Harbor Yacht Club, Justin Law, 57; 3) Coronado Yacht Club, Scott Harris, 63. (12 boats)
Full results at www.sdyc.org
PCCSC Women's Fall Championship Highlights Dominant Weekend For Stanford Sailing
The Stanford Cardinal hosted and won the 2025 Pacific Coast Collegiate Sailing Conference (PCCSC) Women's Fall Championship on October 25-26. The regatta featured nine teams from as far north as Bellingham, WA (Western Washington University), and as far southeast as Tempe, AZ (Arizona State University).
Team SDYC celebrates their win at the 2025 Lipton Cup, their fifth straight win at the event.
J/105 spinnakers billow in San Diego at the Lipton Cup.
THE RACING SHEET
The Cardinal, defenders of the 2025 Leonard M. Fowle Trophy (awarded annually to the best overall team in college sailing), won the regatta in dominant fashion. Stanford finished with 83 points from 14 races, 38 points ahead of second-place University of Hawai'i with 121 points. With nine teams competing, the regatta saw A and B divisions combined into one big 18-boat division (sailing Stanford's fleet of 420s), combining the scores of each school's two boats to form their overall score.
"A light 6-knot easterly showed promise at the time of the first warning," stated the official regatta report on Techscore. "However, by the time the fleet of the first race had rounded the gate, that breeze was long gone. The good news was the new breeze came in fresh and quick from the south. The bad news was that it was far from steady. Slowly clocking west, two steps forward, one step back made for some skewed legs and some short races. The breeze clicked up to eight to 10 knots from the west before moving back southwest for the final race."
Stanford's B division boat was dominant, totalling just 28 points from the 14 races. Senior Sophie Fisher skippered for sophomore Abby Baird for the first eight races of the regatta in Stanford's B division boat, and the duo won seven of those races (finishing second in the second race of the regatta behind Stanford's A division boat). The sophomore duo of Ava Cornell and Alexandra Jones
then took over in B division, finishing in the top five in each of the final six races of the event and winning race 11.
Stanford's A division boat was sailed by the sister duo of senior Ellie Harned and junior Kit Harned for the entire event. Ellie was the skipper and Kit the crew for 13 of the 14 races, but the sisters switched roles for race eight. The Harned sisters tallied 55 points, helping Stanford secure the regatta win, and placing their individual boat in second behind the Cardinal's B division boat and the University of Hawai'i's A division boat.
While Hawai'i was a distant second behind Stanford, the Rainbows were a mind-boggling 80 points ahead of third-place UC Santa Barbara, who
finished with 201 points between their two boats. Hawai'i was anchored by their A division team of junior skipper Stella Taherian and senior crew Peyton Lieser, who sailed in 11 of the 14 races. The Hawai'i A division team recorded 51 points for the regatta, and won two races.
Running at the same time as the PCCSC Women's Fall Championship was the Top-9 Fall Invite, sailed in Stanford's fleet of FJs. A coed regatta run in the exact same format as the women's regatta, it was also won by the Cardinal. Stanford had a third team competing on October 25 and 26, across the country at the Nickerson Trophy, hosted by Tufts University. The Nickerson is an annual regatta in which elite college sailing programs send an all-freshman team to compete. Stanford comfortably won this event, finishing 23 points ahead of secondplace Brown University.
— fritz
PCCSC WOMEN'S FALL CHAMPIONSHIP, 10/25-26, (28r/0t)
420 — 1) Stanford Cardinal, E. & K. Harned/C. Hammond/S. Fisher/A. Cornell, 83 points; 2) University of Hawai'i Rainbows, M. Schuessler/S. Taherian/K. Bailey, 121; 3) UC Santa Barbara Gauchos, Evelyn Engebretson/Emery Sularz, 201. (9 teams)
Full results at www.collegesailing.org
For more racing news, subscribe to 'Lectronic Latitude online at www.latitude38.com
Stanford sailors smile while sailing upwind at a regatta in Boston earlier in the season. The Cardinal won the 2025 Women's PCCSC Fall Championship.
DAVE CURTIS
Stanford's sailing team, pictured here at an early-October regatta hosted by MIT in Cambridge, MA, has dominated the Pacific Coast Collegiate Sailing Conference over the past three years, and has also been the best team in college sailing during that time.
FROM COASTAL TO OFFSHORE
ALL NEW MERIS COLLECTION
Same trusted performance, now PFAS-free with enhanced features and redefined fit. Designed to pair perfectly with the award-winning Atlas 190 DLX Life Jacket. Whether you are navigating coastal waters, or heading offshore, Meris protects you from the elements - so nothing slows you down.
#livebeyondland
Photographer: offshorevisual | Location: IOW
CHANGES
With reports this month on Stargazer's kid boat season; Melissa Ward's unusual summer "working cruise" in the far north; the first installment of our Where Are They Now? feature, in which we catch up with 2025 contributors; and a few fun end-of-year Cruise Notes.
Stargazer — CSY 44
Levy Family – David, Katie, Emily and Harper
Boat Kids and Kid Boats
Newport
When David and I first sailed Stargazer to Mexico in the 2011 Baja HaHa, it was with a couple of friends.
When we returned to the Ha-Ha last year, the crew included our daughters, 13-year-old Emily and 10-year-old Harper, and Stargazer was — and is — a fully fledged kid boat.
What's a kid boat? It's a cruising sailboat with kids aboard — and one always on the lookout for other kid boats for social interaction. It's essential! Luckily, the 2024 Ha-Ha was a huge "kid-boat" year — more than 20 kids on various boats, all sailing southbound.
The kids first met at the rally's stops in Turtle Bay and Bahia Santa Maria. After the Ha-Ha, the kid boats organically grouped together for further adventures. The majority headed to La Paz, while a few others went directly to Banderas Bay. The La Paz boats — Stargazer among them — joined forces with other existing kid boats for the start of months of fun and shenanigans.
The first "scheduled" activity was Thanksgiving. The ever-growing kid boat flotilla headed to Caleta Partida, where they launched boatloads of toys including kayaks, SUPs, lily pads, towbehind inflatable toys and dinghies. You name the water toy, it was there! At one point, all the kids congregated on the 70-ft Halcyon Seas, one of the powerboats that had come down with the
Ha-Ha. It was pure excitement to see them swimming laps around the boat, jumping off the fly bridge, and playing with all the water toys.
With too many kids and families to all fit on one boat for a Thanksgiving feast, everyone joined together for a potluck on the beach. It was a Thanksgiving we will all remember.
After the holiday, with the Sea of Cortez water getting cooler and northerly winds becoming more common, boats started migrating south. No formal kid boat plans had been made at that point, so many boats went their separate ways with future plans unknown.
It wasn't long before reunions started happening! We had been headed to Banderas Bay, but when iffy weather was forecast for that area, we diverted to Mazatlán — and arrived to find HaHa kid boats Skye and Sea Monkey already there. Another kid boat, Polar Sun, was leaving as we arrived, so we took their spot in the tight inner harbor. We enjoyed Mazatlán together for a few days, then buddy-boated south to Isla Isabela. There, we met back up with Polar Sun, who had scoped out the southern anchorage for us and guided our trio of boats into a great sand patch. (One example of the benefits of buddyboating.) After the parade of kids and families explored this beautiful island, the four of us continued south in company to La Cruz in Banderas Bay.
La Cruz is known for its kid-boat community. There are weekly events for the kids, including trash-boat regattas, movie nights, field trips, and even a kid-only morning net following the regular net. Stargazer anchored in the anchorage near other kid boats Malihini and Panther. La Cruz was a wonderful place for the kids to make new friends and build on the relationships they had made earlier. The kid-boat families enjoyed the holiday together, including Christmas Day at a local water park.
Stargazer then continued farther south to Tenacatita, a large, protected anchorage just north of Barra de Navidad. Without plans in place,
somehow the majority of kid boats also gravitated there. We quickly re-rendevoused with Wippy, Jedi, Nike, Varekai, Taj, Freeranger and Oatmeal Savage.
And then there were the new kid boats: Double Deuce, Ku'u Kaunu, Yasume, and Condesa. And we still weren't done! Other kid boats that Stargazer had been traveling with up north all ended up in Tenacatita as well: Sea Monkey, Skye, Panther, Polar Sun, and Malihini. It was definitely party time in Mexico!
As the New Year approached, Tenacatita's spectacular beach bonfire didn't disappoint. The word spread quickly on the VHF morning net, so a majority
'Stargazer's Katie, Emily, Harper and David are back for another season of kid fun in Mexico. STARGAZER
of the cruisers gathered to usher in the New Year. By then, Tenacatita had become a magical playground. After homeschooling, kids would pop onto the radio announcing that afternoon's plans. Of the many activities planned or simply created, "Kid Island" was a favorite. It would start with one lily pad being anchored nearby, then all the kids would join in and add more floating rafts, lily pads, SUPs, kayaks, and whatever means of floating transportation the kids had, until they had created a floating "island."
The checklist of activities only grew
from there: surf break within paddling distance from your boat — check; idyllic palapa restaurant and bar (mostly for moms and dads) — check. Estuary tour into the mangroves — check; beautiful mile-long sand beaches — check; provisions a short dinghy ride away — check; great snorkeling — check. As noted, it was magical.
While Emily and Harper were having a great time with all their new friends, David and I met some absolutely incredible parents. All these families were living on their boats, homeschooling their kids, and cruising around Mexico.
Each boat had a unique story, but all shared that family, adventure, and happiness are their top priorities.
After enjoying Tenacatita and Barra de Navidad (another kid-boat nerve center), it was time to head back to the Sea of Cortez. It was hard to say goodbye — for both the kids and adults. Cruising is so unique in that you meet other cruisers and get to know them, but at some point you know that you will part ways. Many kid boats ended up doing the Pacific Puddle Jump to French Polynesia (including Oatmeal Savage, Freeranger, Panther, and Polar Sun). Others headed north, like us, or south, with different plans on where to summer over in Mexico.
Stargazer headed north at our own pace, harbor-hopping at many of the places we had stopped on the way down. Pulling into new anchorages sometimes meant solitude, but many times we ran into boats we knew.
Once back in the Sea, we explored the many amazing anchorages between La Paz and Loreto. In the gem anchorage of Agua Verde, Stargazer and Condesa anchored close enough for the kids to easily SUP back and forth and plan after-school activities, one of which was a group hike with the Condesa and Ku'u Kaunu crews over the hill and across the next valley to the Painted Caves.
At Loreto, we anchored in the open roadstead for a day of provisioning. Then it was a quick trip across to Puerto Balandra on Isla Carmen. As we approached the mouth of the anchorage, our by-now well-tuned "kid radar" picked up Double Deuce a few miles to the south, Wippy was anchored inside, and word came that Varakei was coming in as well! This new/renewed group of kid boats enjoyed Mother's Day together — and stayed together as we explored Bahia Concepcion, Sweet Pea Cove on Isla San Marcos, and Santa Rosalia. It is these sometimes-organic meetups with boats from the past that create lifelong memories.
With summer approaching, the Sea of Cortez starts to get uncomfortably hot, so most boats pause their cruising adventures during the summer months. After much deliberation, Stargazer's summer plans were decided, and we headed for Marina San Carlos. The place offers both a dry-storage yard and slips at the marina. As the mercury
PHOTOS STARGAZER
Ashore or afloat, last year's Mexican cruising season was abuzz with kid-boat antics and activities. Top left: A "kid island" under construction. Top right: 'Stargazer' underway.
CHANGES
in the thermometer seemed to rise another few degrees every day, we tucked Stargazer away at the beginning of July and headed for other summer travel plans.
Now a new cruising season is upon us! We were all excited to return to the boat in October, and are in the midst of recommissioning and reprovisioning for another season. We hope to reconnect with some kid boats from last year, as well as meet up with whatever new kid boats come down with the 2025 Ha-Ha. We can't wait to see you on the water!
— Katie 10/4/25
Rafifi — Jeanneau 40
Dr. Melissa Ward Science From a Sailboat
San Diego
After crossing the Pacific on Kurt Christofferson's Deerfoot 62 Emma a few years back, the crew of that voyage have scattered across the globe on adventures of different kinds. While Emma continued toward Fiji, I continued my career in marine science, founding the organization Windward Sciences. While looking for excuses to conduct research from sailboats whenever possible, I stumbled on a ragtag group of scientists at the University of Oxford in 2023.
As we masqueraded as tea-sipping professionals in squashy common-room armchairs, plans grew to launch a research initiative to study evolutionary biology on island archipelagos across the world. We hoped to understand and model how biodiversity is being lost (or gained) over time, making islands the perfect study systems. (Think Darwin's voyages — but this time, we came armed with advanced computing, DNA sequencing, and AI to address these age-old subjects.)
With so many samples to collect and so few berths available, our sailing-savvy scientists doubled as skippers, and we were joined by Suzy Garren (one of my original Pacific crossing crewmates) to help make it all work.
As we'd planned, the small research collective grew to include scientists, artists and free thinkers across three nationalities — Finnish, American and French. After many brainstorming sessions and funding applications, we cobbled together a shoestring budget to cover a few bits of essential science equipment and rental of the Jeanneau 40 Rafifi for a pilot expedition in Finland's Turku Archipelago in the Baltic Sea.
The seven of us set sail in August for what would become an incredibly exhausting yet rewarding couple of weeks in a landscape very foreign to me. To begin with, the Turku Archipelago in southern Finland was one of the most navigationally challenging places many of us had sailed. It was a labyrinth of tens of thousands of islands, some the size of Catalina and others barely big enough to land a gull. Given we hoped to sample islands unaffected by humans, we were sleuthing our way through infrequently transited and unmarked passages. To make matters more interesting, the Baltic Sea is still
rebounding from its last glacial maximum. This means that the ground is creeping upward after the giant ice sheet burying northern Europe melted some 20,000 years ago — like a memory foam mattress slowly returning to form after removing your hand. As a result, the rising sea's shallow rocks form new, small islands or subsurface hazards faster than new charts can often be drafted. Despite careful review of paper charts and Navionics, we still saw a few unmarked rocks waiting for an unlucky victim. "Rock watch" quickly became a full-time position on deck. With no windlass, we found out the hard way that anchoring was uncommon in this region's slick granite seabed. As a result, one crew often stayed with the boat, leaving our science teams one member down, and sending us back to far-flung docks and marinas
fairy tale. Alas, the science had to go on, but those rare quiet moments were ones to be remembered.
It remains to be seen what next summer's voyage will bring, but perhaps the next update will be written from the research collective's very own sailboat and floating laboratory. Until then, we have returned to our labs and computers to analyze the data and plot our next course.
— Melissa 11/4/25 www.windwardsciences.com
Where Are They Now?
Cruisers are folks on the move. Their appearances in Changes in Latitudes are just snapshots in time. By the time their stories appear on these pages, the sailors who wrote them are often many miles and oceans away on further adventures. As 2025 slips into the rearview mirror, we catch up with a few of the folks and boats that have appeared here over the past year.
in the late evening.
Between an inability to anchor and our commitment to an ambitious datacollection plan, we reached a collective state of sleep deprivation within a few days. Meals were eaten on the go, and salon naps happened anytime the weather, science, and sailing would allow (an infrequent concurrence). Mostly, the weather was calm, although two days of over-30-knot winds provided a fun chance to put the boat through her paces. Our biggest hiccup was a late, windy night Med-mooring and a wrapped prop. While this could be a story of its own, we successfully unpickled ourselves with a quick skinny
dip and an expertly tied sheet bend.
Somehow, though, our state of exhaustion did not dampen crew spirits, instead culminating in post-sampling dance parties, dinghy charcuterie hours, and a very serious temporary tattoo ceremony.
The biggest drawback was that our sleepless science blitz made it difficult to reflect on the extraordinarily unique landscape surrounding us. So far north, sunset was a multi-hour affair, and in the few-minute break while waiting for a dinghy pickup, you could look out across the mosaic of islands to see large white swans drifting silently across the water like some kind of eerie
✯ Kathy and Scott Erwin started their cruising on the 2021 Baja Ha-Ha aboard their Atascadero-based Brewer 44 Sea Bella. They headed to the South Pacific the next year, eventually ending up in New Zealand, where — inspired by other cruisers who had switched to multihulls — they sold Sea Bella and moved aboard the Outremer 49 Kalea
"Our sailing journey continued to Fiji and Vanuatu, both fabulous experiences," says Kathy. Being avid divers, the Erwins list their favorite Fiji underwater sites as Rainbow Reef, Namena and the Astrolabe/Beqa area. "I was stunned by the beautiful coral called the cabbage patch," says Kathy. "The vertical pinnacles of Namena were spectacular, and the famous shark dives of Beqa … mind blowing!
"Other Fiji highlights include the Lau group, expecially charming for our host family being so welcoming and giving. Hiking up to the cave of skulls and bones of their ancestors was a thrill.
Above: Forty feet was a bit cramped for seven people — fortunately, they all got along well. Left bottom: Finland's Turku Archipelago features desolate beauty with hours-long sunsets. Left middle: Electronic charts must be supplemented with paper ones — and even those can change on the fly. Left top: Melissa (center, in dark blue) and her team. 'Emma' crewmate Suzy Garren is in light blue. The rest of the team included French and Finnish researchers. Top right: 'Rafifi' proved a decent floating laboratory.
CHANGES
And the endless white sand beaches and sand bars were so majestic."
around the public docks where we were berthed. Hilarious creatures!
New experiences awaited in Vanuatu's quiet Port Resolution. Highlights there included booking a trip to the spewing Mount Yasur volcano. "Exceptional," says Kathy. "The loud explosions, staring straight down into the lava pit, while holding onto rickety railing and barely dodging falling red lava rocks — wow!"
Another Vanuatu memory was being welcomed into the small Awei village in lower Malekula, where only 20 people live a very simple life. "Chief Safren invited us to church, and a charming lap-lap lunch of water taro and fish afterward. We all became quick friends with many wonderful interactions during our week's stay."
The end of the season saw Scott and Kathy waiting for a weather window to head back to the cyclone safety of New Zealand. As for next season, says Kathy, "Possibly exploring the rest of Vanuatu, the Solomons, Papua New Guinea and Raja Ampat, Indonesia."
✯ "My slow transformation from rabid racer to mellow cruiser, courtesy of the Oyster 56 Quester and her generous and gracious skipper/owner Michael Yokell and wife Deb Rahm, continues at a leisurely pace." So reports Roxanne Vitesse of Oxnard. "This past July, I was back aboard for a lovely introduction to the San Juan Islands — for me a bucket-list item.
"Quester's home port is Anacortes, a lovely harbor town I never tire of visiting.
After prepping the boat for a summer San Juans run, we dropped our lines and headed for Port Townsend. There I discovered the entertaining antics of river otters, who were in abundance all
"After Port Townsend, we sought some quiet time in a few less-populated coves in and around Lopez Island, Orcas Island and San Juan Island, before treating ourselves to a couple of days in Roche Harbor.
"Of course, no sailing adventure is without its annoying disruptions. It doesn't matter if you're pounding across oceans or motorsailing the still waters of some island-dotted sound — something is going to
break. This time it was the forward head. After a bit of troubleshooting and circuit tracing, we figured we had a bad macerator pump. The spare, unfortunately, wasn't operational either, so we
Above: Why Beqa is considered the best shark diving in the world. Top left: Scott and Kathy. Bottom left: 'Kalea' at anchor. Top right: Scott at the Cave of Skulls.
ALL PHOTOS KALEA
Right and below: Rox cruises 'Risa' closer to home. Below right: River otters are a hoot!
sprinted back to Anacortes for a new one. Once it was installed we discovered that the whole problem had been in the wiring, not the pump itself! So Quester now has two operational spares.
"On a side note, Deb was very impressed with my work-around for the forward head while it was kaput: biodegradable kitchen bags and wheatbased clumping cat litter — need I say more?
"I ended my leg of Quester's ongoing summer jaunt at Port Sidney, BC. Takeaways? The San Juans are achingly beautiful, full of flora and fauna, fun anchorages for kayaking and hiking, and picturesque, charming, well-appointed harbors.
"All in all, it was another opportunity for this dedicated racing sailor to slow down a little and smell the pine trees. Until Quester's next sojourn (a trip through the Panama Canal has been casually discussed) I will be skippering my 1981 Catalina 38, Risa out of Channel Islands Harbor on a few races and outings to Anacapa and Santa Cruz islands … not a bad playground, that."
✯ Baxter and Molly Gillespie's Virginia-based Valiant 47 Terrapin is currently in Opua, New Zealand, "Sitting comfortably in a marina slip for the first time since Christmas Day 2024," says Molly. "It's the beginning of November 2025, and we're celebrating the completion of the South Pacific sailing season with friends on boats whom we've met during these last nine months — some in Panama, others in the Marquesas, most in the Tuamotus, but a few whom we recently met in Tonga.
"We've all spent countless hours discussing weather windows, the best routes through the 'dangerous middle,' or the passage down to New Zealand. We've snorkeled with these new friends, had dinners out, discussed where we're going next, and of course, talked endlessly about boat problems and solutions. We've also shared stories about family back home and our lives up until this point in time. Considering we didn't even know each other nine months ago, we've all become relatively close.
"That's the cruising life in a nutshell: a transition between new friends
and old, between tropical islands and colder weather, between life before you lived on a boat and the simple, weather-dependent life of living on one.
"Next up: Baxter and I are setting off for some land-based adventures on New Zealand's South Island. We look forward to new adventures, both ashore and afloat."
✯ Through the ever-improving magic of satellite communications, we caught Allan and Rina Alexopulos of the San Diego-based Lagoon 450S Iliohale in mid-passage — and they proceeded to send an update right back from midocean!
"The crew and many guests of Iliohale thoroughly enjoyed our Pacific crossing this year. Writing from the helm 225 miles off New Zealand's North Island in calm seas and eight-knot winds, we can say this has been a fantastic Pacific crossing, exceeding our many expectations.
IN LATITUDES
crossing from Mexico to the Marquesas, and crew from previous Baja HaHa's joining us for their own 'trip of a lifetime.' We purposely spent more time in the Tuamotus exploring places we skipped in 2009, enjoying the solitude of the out-of-the-way atolls Raroia and Tikehau, along with the thriving metropolises in Fakarava and Rangiroa.
"Our overnight passage to Tahiti was eventful, losing our inverter in the middle of the night in a cloud of smoke and alarms. Luckily, guests joining us for the always-spectacular TahitiMoorea Rendez-vous brought us a new inverter. We got some wonderful dock time in Marina Taina for repairs and a long-overdue washdown before heading to Moorea, exploring many reef anchorages we missed last time.
"Our five-day passage to Aitutaki was bumpy but fast, and we stayed for 21 wonderful days, mostly waiting for a weather window to Niue.
"After the bureaucracy of French Polynesia, the friendly, no-nonsense approach in Aitutaki was a breath of fresh air. We rented a scooter for most of our visit, allowing us to explore the island, find all the best shops, and splurge on a massage and dinner at the four-star Pacific Resort. After rustic accommodations through most of French Polynesia, the Cooks were a highlight of our crossing.
"Our passage to Niue was sporty, but the calm mooring field when we arrived allowed us to spend three days reliving one of our most memorable experiences from 2009. The overnight to Vava'u, Tonga, was a breeze, and we anchored in the familiar waters of Port Maurelle at 3 a.m. Family joined us for a month as we explored many of the calm anchorages of Vava'u.
"French Polynesia was a whirlwind for us with crew members departing after our
Above: It doesn't get more exciting than diving with whales. Top left: Molly and Baxter are currently exploring New Zealand overland. Top right: 'Terrapin' flying her colors. ALL
PHOTOS TERRAPIN
PHOTOS
'Iliohale' was in the midst of a long passage when Allan and Rina sent us an update.
CHANGES IN
"Almost three months in Tonga were not enough, and we jokingly perused houses for sale to relive this part of paradise in the future.
"Since we left Vava'u in mid-October, Neptune has been kind to us, as steady and mostly persistent 20-knot winds and seas from the northeast have made this a fast passage.
"While we skipped Minerva Reef this time because of the good weather window, we're excited to get to New Zealand for a family reunion of sorts, where California-based daughter Megan, sonin-law Anthony, and granddaughters Esmeralda and Evangeline join us to watch Auckland-based daughter Alyssa (Latitude 38 cover girl January 2017) marry Eric, of the cruising boat Zephyr, with their son Bjorn in Whangarei. Yeah — all in the family!"
✯ Since returning from Alaska last fall, Sean Kolk and Kate Schnippering have been living aboard their Oaklandbased Catalina 36 Petrichor in Seattle, Bellingham and places between.
They've been hard at work, focusing on a few upgrades, including bolstering the
electrical system, swapping out propane for induction, improving the fuel system, and sewing all-new cushions — all in preparation for a summer of cruising British Columbia's inlets next year.
They've also been busy sailing on other people's boats. In June, Sean crewed the Van Isle 360 Race (580 miles around Vancouver Island) on Golux, a new Berckemeyer BM50 — and at 36 tons, the heaviest sailboat in the fleet. Meanwhile, from February
'Golux' on the breeze in the Van Isle 360 Race. Top left: Between work sessions on 'Petrichor', Sean and Kate sail on other people's boats. Left: The aluminum-hulled schooner 'Amundsen' was built in the Netherlands and launched just last year.
through June, Kate joined the crew of Amundsen, a Pelagic 77 polar expedition sailing vessel — also a new construction. She spent her first season with sail training in the Falklands and Chile, then crossing the South Atlantic (by celestial navigation) with a stopover in Tristan da Cunha, and onto the annual refit in Cape Town.
Up next, Sean and Kate will be sailing with Statsraad Lehmkuhl, a 322-ft Norwegian tall ship, from Seattle to San Francisco, in company with Maritime
PHOTOS PETRICHOR
Above:
Blue, an ocean innovation accelerator and alliance. (Instagram @kschnipp and @s.a.kolk)
Readers — Look for more "Where Are They Now?" updates in the January issue.
Cruise Notes
• Elsewhere in this month's Changes column is a story by Melissa Ward about a research cruise aboard a sailboat in the wilds of Finland. But regular readers might best remember her and sailing friend Suzy Garren as our cover girls for the June 2022, issue. Melissa notes that cover-girl fame is somewhat fleeting (who knew?), although people occasionally recognize her. Two "fans" who did were a couple of Latitude regulars, Wayne Hendryx and Steve Swann. (Wayne and wife Carol did a number of Ha-Ha's with their Hughes
LATITUDES
sometimes during — her work, Suzy regularly sails the Bay on her own Oakland-based boat, a Jeanneau Sun Fast 36, Four Wraps ("Because when it's the middle of the night and you're in the middle of a squall in the middle of the ocean and the person on the watch before you doesn't put four wraps on the winch and you go to ease sails.…")
45 Capricorn Cat. Steve and wife Tawani crewed for them, and later sailed their own boat down to Australia a few years ago.)
Melissa and Suzy did the Puddle Jump as crew on Kurt Christofferson's Deerfoot 62 Emma a few years back — an experience so fun that they hope to be back aboard for more adventures sometime soon.
While Dr. Ward (Melissa has a Ph.D. in marine sciences from UC Davis) continues to sail in between — and
• In a lucky fluke of nature, Scott and Mary Smith of the Santa Cruzbased Beneteau First 42 Coyote had such a pleasant trip back up the coast last spring that it hardly deserved to be called a "bash."
"It was mostly uneventful, with weather windows very much aligned with our progress north," says Scott. "We left Banderas Bay on March 12, and got a 10-gun salute from Sweetheart as we passed them at anchor at Punta Mita. We then made our way with some sailing and some motoring
Your Boatyard in the Heart of Paradise
HAULOUT
• Marine Travelift 25 tons
TAHITI CUSTOMS POLICY
Foreign Flag vessels can stay on dry storage in our yard for up to 12 months out of 24.
Our Services|
• Marine railway 70 tons
• Storage in adjustable steel cradles
Raiatea Carenage will make sure paradise is everything you expected. Call, write, or sail in . . . we're here to serve you.
B.P. 1111 Uturoa Raiatea 98 735 Polynésie Française
• Fenced Yard
• Travelift 50T & Amphibious mobile trailer 50T
• Services of our tug for towing safety assistance and interventions
Suzy and Melissa (center) with "fans" Steve, left, and Wayne.
Large, fenced, secure dry storage area
Professional boatyard in the heart of Paradise
CHANGES IN LATITUDES
to Cabo for a fuel stop, to wait for weather, and to effect some minor repairs.
"Our next leg was up to Bahia San Juanico, Asuncion, Turtle Bay, and Ensenada with mostly motoring, and some spirited sailing. After having experienced Turtle Bay during the HaHa, we found it eerily quiet in late March.
"We spent two nights at the Cruiseport Village in Ensenada, while they helped us through the checkout process. The staff there are really great with this service, and they would not even take tips for walking us through the process.
"The new US check-in process is also quite slick. We used the CBP iPhone app, and conducted the entire process while we were passing offshore from San Diego on our way north — even
Unlike many "bashers," 'Coyote's trip home from Mexico last spring left Scott and Mary smiling — well, most of the time. Left: 'Coyote' at anchor.
though it was 4 a.m.
"Throughout the whole trip, we seemed to have weather windows open up just when we wanted them, so we just kept going, with only a few one- to two-day stopovers. The only hitch in the entire trip was that we had to go into Monterey Harbor to wait out a big swell that made the Santa Cruz harbor entrance too dangerous. Several days
later we sailed across Monterey Bay on a rare beam reach, and Coyote arrived in Santa Cruz six months after her lateSeptember departure."
• We wish all of you, near and far, afloat and ashore, the merriest of Christmases and happiest of New Years. For those spending the holidays afloat, please let us know where you are, what you did, whom you did it with. If you're among the lucky ones out there who actually are "changing latitudes" — especially if you feel as if your cruising dreams were launched or inspired by Latitude 38 over the years — the best way to "pay it forward" is writing about your own travels for an upcoming issue. Who knows how many sailors your words might inspire to cast off their own dock lines?
Finally, a heartfelt thanks from your faithful scribe to all contributors whose stories, photos, enthusiasm and humor have made this column so dang much fun to put together every month. — john riise (jriise38@gmail.com)
*Offer valid until December 15, 2025 Conditions apply Use code BSVIP38 for a VIP Upgrade! Sail into Savings & Sunshine! Bring 2 Guests FREE!*
and more!
Submit your ad online at www.latitude38.com/adverts
Your ad is live online immediately upon completion of payment. Ads automatically renew every 30 days, you can cancel anytime.
DINGHIES, LIFERAFTS & ROWBOATS
MARINE SAFETY 78-PERSON OPEN LIFEBOAT. Thirty ft. long x 10-ft beam x 4.33 ft deep. Fiberglass construction, Fleming gear. Good used condition (refurbished). Boat is located in Oakland, CA. g.levin@uscombustion.com (208) 7255781 tinyurl.com/2wyd2n3v
12 FT SHELLBACK 2000. Wooden rowboat and Shaw & Tenney oars. New trailer. $5,000. Sausalito, CA kraussliz@gmail.com (415) 332-9103
24 FEET & UNDER SAILBOATS
20 FT SANTANA 1986. Two working sails, 1 mainsail, 1 spinnaker. Mast step has been reinforced. Rebuilt bulkheads/ cabin top to sides to bottom. Removed/ glassed thru-hull sensors (prevent leaks). Larger genoa tracks for larger blocks. Wire halyard added to mast. Flared keel. Four coats of West System epoxy resin water repellent on bottom. Bottom not painted. Newly painted trailer. This is a great boat, structurally and appearance. Need to find new owner; I can no longer sail. $1700 OBO. Paso Robles, CA nsccny43@aol.com (321) 947-4908
20 FT CAL 20 1963. On trailer with 4hp four-stroke Mercury motor. Good sails, new interior, deck paint. Clean boat! Ready to sail! Phone for information. Serious buyers only. $3,800. Richmond Yacht Club (925) 872-0403
17 FT MONTGOMERY 17 1975. I’m moving and cannot take it with me, alas. It needs a little work (recovery from a parking lot dismasting): rigging, some topside fiberglass work. But it’s free! Just take it away! Palo Alto georgeg@tioli.net
22 FT CHRYSLER 22 1980. Swing keel family sailboat ‘Mexicali Rose’. Comfy interior sleeps 5. Excellent mast and rigging. Also great trailer with disc brakes. Great first boat. $2,500. Valley Springs, CA bonnielopezunr@gmail.com (209) 772-9695
23 FT RANGER 23 1976. Refit in 2021. Awlgrip hull and topside, Trinidad bottom paint. New standing rigging, tinted tempered glass ports, tri-color masthead lights, mainsail and tiller cover, quarter berth cushions. New hull liner. Equipment: 6hp Nissan 4-stroke outboard, spinnaker and whisker poles, 2 anchors, 4 winches. Electronics: knotmeter, depthsounder, compass, VHF radio, stereo. Sails: jibs (100, 125, 150), spinnaker, main. Additional photos and information available upon request. $12,000. Sausalito, CA rwilsonsf@gmail.com
23 FT BEAR BOAT 1938. Own a piece of San Francisco Bay sailing history! Classic 1938 Bear Boat #8 ‘Pola Bear’, the oldest Bear class boat still standing and sailing proud! New Pineapple main and jib. Fir planked, oak ribs, mahogany cockpit, lead keel, canvas deck. Full cushions. Hitachi 6 hp outboard. Full winter boat cover and spring/summer covers. Mast refinished. Hauled out each year for bottom paint and maintenance. She is simple, perfectly balanced, and sails smooth and quiet. Currently being sailed on Monterey Bay. $6,500 OBO. Moss Landing, CA steve@sequoiafoods.com (831) 2543229
25
– 28 FEET SAILBOATS
26 FT J/80 1994. Great family daysailer or club racer. Huge cockpit, high boom, asymmetrical spinnaker. A delight to sail. Comfortable and stable yet nimble and fast. Mainsail, jib, and spinnaker. Priced well below market; here is your opportunity to get a modern sportboat for a reasonable price. More pictures at URL. $15,000 OBO. Alameda, CA wayne@sailing-jworld.com https:// tinyurl.com/4kv2s4en
27 FT BALBOA 1978. Maxi — trailerable. Health forces sale. $7,000. Marina Bay Yacht Harbor, Richmond rtrouble@pacbell.net (775) 677-7503
26 FT COLUMBIA 26 1967. Sweet boat. Six-foot headroom. Main and jib. V-berth, settee with cushions. Dry bilge. Current registration. Just bought 36-ft sailboat to sail and live on. $500 OBO. Alameda, CA daletumi@gmail.com (510) 301-9237
27 FT CATALINA 27 1977. Roomy down below for a 27-footer, this one has the dinette layout. A sturdy daysailer, she is big enough to handle the Bay’s winds and tides. She was last hauled in 2022 by KKMI. New standing rigging and roller-reefing jib in 2011; new full-batten mainsail in 2017. Harken roller reefing. Atomic 4 gas inboard starts and runs well. Two batteries. More details at URL. $5,700. Pt. Richmond, CA catalina27ladieschoice@gmail.com https://tinyurl.com/3xtbbjvy
26 FT ERICSON 26 2 1988. Classic small yacht in excellent condition. Stable and fun. Roller furling jib, wheel, dodger. 10 hp Universal condition in excellent shape. New in 2024: standing rigging, wheel pilot, wireless wind instrument, StackPack. cushions. $15,000 OBO. Point Richmond brianbouch1@gmail.com (707) 6967427
Place your Business Classy ad today
Deadline for print is ALWAYS the 15th of the month prior to publication.
VESSEL MOVING
27.93 FT PACIFIC SEACRAFT 25 MK II 1978. Sailboat with excellent trailer and tremendous amount of gear ready for someone handy. New Yanmar 2YM15 with 1.5 hrs, two furlers, six sails, cockpit and interior cushions, two anchors, wind vane self steering and tiller pilot, Furuno radar, propane system parts. Too many parts to list — contact Todd Chandler for link to photos. $18,900. Newport, OR todd@chandlermarineservices.com (541) 992-9289
26 FT YAMAHA 1984. PHRF racer and comfortable cruiser. Interior and exterior maintained in excellent condition by meticulous owner. Yanmar 1gm10 diesel with very low hrs. Garmin chartplotter, Raymarine VHF radio, emergency beacon and many other items. $10,000. Alameda Jnovie@aol.com (415) 271-3441
29 – 31 FEET SAILBOATS
30 FT J/30 1980. ‘Windspeed’ has a good PHRF rating and plenty of room below to make her a great racer/ cruiser combination. New standing rigging. Full suit of North 3DL and Pineapple sails. New halyards. Fast and comfortable. $13,500. Richmond jonathan@technicalwizardry.com (510) 394-4004
30 FT CATALINA 30 1984. Well maintained Catalina 30 in great condition, located in Alameda, California. A solid, comfortable, and spacious classic — ideal for weekend cruising, liveaboard living, or a three-day commuter residence on the Bay. Highlights: Universal diesel engine, recently refurbished with less than 500 nautical miles since the rebuild; runs strong and reliable. Relatively new standing rigging, professionally replaced by a certified rigger. Spacious interior: Bright, open layout sleeps 5–6 comfortably, with a full galley and generous storage throughout. Wellequipped; includes numerous extras and upgrades for sailing or comfortable marina life. Excellent layout: roomy cockpit, easy-to-handle sail plan, and Catalina’s legendary balance and seaworthiness. Many more features not listed; must see. $9,500. Alameda septsept15454@yahoo.com (510) 399-3383
30 FT FREEDOM 30 1987. A great condition yacht with premium extras! Set sail with confidence in this nicely maintained Freedom 30. Featuring a gorgeous two-cabin interior, new plumbing, LED lighting throughout, carbon fiber mast, a high-quality RIB dinghy with outboard motor, and a host of valuable extras. Whether you’re planning long-term cruising or weekend sailing, this Freedom 30 delivers safety, comfort, performance, and style. Don’t miss your chance to own a sailboat that stands out — featured in Ferenc Mate’s World’s Best Sailboats. Contact me today and make this amazing boat yours! Details and contact information can be found online at: Freedom30.boats. $29,500 Or best offer. Richmond, CA Freedom30.boats
30 FT BABA 1980. Classic Bluewater cruiser, cutter rigged. Hull # 94 is in very good condition. I am the third owner; previous owner invested ~$18K including a new motor (Volvo Penta 30 w/less than 60 hrs on it), new mast, SS tank replacements, and various maintenance and repair efforts for which all receipts and paperwork are on hand. Since I purchased her in 2023, I’ve performed additional maintenance and upgrades such as redoing the teak decking and new interior upholstery. She is a clean, stout vessel, perfect for the Bay and beyond in just about any condition. Call for more detailed information. She’s currently in a transferable slip in downtown Sausalito. $42,500. Sausalito, CA bryanlee868@gmail.com (415) 5353324
30 FT ERICSON 30+ 1980. One owner since 1996. 16hp diesel, runs great. Good sails, Autohelm, many extras! Attractive interior, Clean boat! Serious buyers only. Phone Theo for more information and price. Richmond Yacht Club (925) 872-0403
30 FT FISHER MARINE NO YEAR. Year not on documents. Project. Very reasonable to right person. Great sea boat. Charleston, OR kovexair@gmail.com
29 FT COLUMBIA 29 1967. New main and new jib. Atomic Four engine. Origo cook stove, Cole wood stove. Six-foot headroom. Sleeps 4. Good condition. $5,000 OBO. Vallejo, CA bbrccr@sbcglobal.net (805) 704-1946
30 FT OLSON 30 1982. Late model. Includes custom dual-axle trailer and very recent Ballenger double-spreader mast with corresponding rod rigging. Last 20 years in Portland (freshwater). Rigging, stanchions/lifelines, running rigging, winches in excellent condition. Boat has been thoroughly/completely gone through at well-known Elkhorn Composites: A. All three ribs at mast foot replaced with composite elements (boat has substantial jockstrap). B. Three small soft spots in the deck/ cockpit replaced w/composite core/ gelcoat. C. Bottom and keel completely stripped to the gelcoat and keel fiberglassed as necessary. D. Keel bolts torqued/updated. E. New lifting rod threaded end. F. Several coats barrier, two of Pro-Line antifoul (59% Cu). Mucho $$. Not splashed yet. Two good race mains, spinnakers, older jibs. $12,500. Morgan Hill mtown@att.net
30 FT YANKEE ONE CLASSIC WOODEN RACING SLOOP 1949. Master Mariners award-winning sailboat designed by William Starling Burgess and Stone-built. ‘Flame’ was totally restored in 2015. Varnished wood hull. Roller furling. Stainless outboard bracket. 2 spinakers. All new stainless rigging. More photos available. Complete survey in 2023 available. “A Sailor’s Saiboat.” Recently shown at the Master Mariner’s Wooden Boat Show. $49,900 OBO. Richmond stefroche916@gmail.com
31 FT CUSTOM 1965. For Sale: Shadowfox – 31-Foot Ocean Crossing Cruiser Ready to set sail? Shadowfox is a well-maintained 31-foot sailboat perfect for weekend escapes or longer adventures. Priced to sell at $31,200, this vessel offers incredible value for its condition and upgrades. Key Features Length: 31 + feet Year: 1965 Engine: Reliable 20hp Universal diesel, serviced 2023 920 hrs. Sails: New mainsail (2022), roller furling jib several headsails, and spinnakers Electronics: “Autohelm, Chart plotter, VHF, and Ham radio ” Upgrades: recently replaced ROD standing rigging Condition In excellent shape and ready to sail. Meticulously maintained with full service records available. Why Shadowfox? Imagine cruising the coast with the wind in your sails and the freedom of the sea ahead. $25,000. San Pedro, Cali kwasiemoto@cox.net 3105288957
32 – 35 FEET SAILBOATS
35 FT SCHOCK 1986. Solid boat. Don’t let the price drop scare you! New main, 3 jibs, 2 spins. Yanmar 2 gm20. Sailed 3 times in 3 years. Call or email for equip list. Contact Tom. $8,000. Vallejo, CA jinkxochs@gmail.com (707) 694-6846
34 FT CATALINA 1986. Sail-ready in great condition. Perfect for S.F. Bay or Baja liveaboard. Sleeps 6. Mainsail and 120 genoa. Rigged for solo. New Catalina sells for >$200K. Sacrifice 1986 for $29,500. Contact Ed. $29,500. South Beach Harbor, S.F. baycat34@comcast.net (408) 489-7511
35 FT J/35 1993. Hull #324 of 330. Final design iteration: more spacious, modern cockpit, upgraded Yanmar, hydraulics, winches, stainless grab rails, cushions, head, instrument panel. Excellent condition. Super-clean. Race bottom fall 2024, New spinnaker, carbon jib, and main, B&G H4000 instruments. ProStart. All cordage is Spectra (most new), never-used stove, 2024 carbon spin pole, spare pole, new whisker pole. 6 Harken winches (4 self-tailing), new line clutches, new windward sheeting traveler, new Harken Carbo headfoil. All hardware is top shelf. MOM-8 w/fresh recharge. Inflatable, keel and rudder templated by Dencho. 2024 survey. Easy to sail fast. Successful race record. Comfortable to daysail or cruise. Good transferable slip in San Pedro (LA28 sailing venue). Text for more details/ videos/photos. $32,000. San Pedro, CA steve@pactank.com (562) 234-0991
FT FANTASIA 35 MK II 1979. In very good condition and ready to go. Most all systems upgraded including standing rigging and lifelines. Abovedeck Maxwell windlass, Profurl 4200 genoa furler, ComNav autopilot, Vector AIS, Dometic fridge in updated galley and full stand-up workroom are just some of the features that make so much in a 35-ft boat. Ten-inch pillow top mattress! Runs great! ComNav Commander P2 color autopilot, Octopus hydraulic steering ram, Blue Sky charge controller, new lifelines (2018), new rigging (2018), New Found Metals stainless ports, Garmin chartplotter, Vesper SP160 antenna splitter, Vesper XB-8000 AIS, Standard Horizon AIS/ GPS VHF w/remote handset in cockpit, Iverson freestanding bimini, lazy jacks, transom hoist. $39,000. Isleton CA carey.shine@gmail.com (541) 973-9562 https://tinyurl.com/ypssa9ue
35
33 FT ALLIED LUDERS 33 1968. Sister ship to Robin Lee Graham’s ‘Dove ll’. Basic electronics. Sails in good shape. Westerbeke 21. 2800 hrs, rebuilt transmission. New cutlass, shaft log hose, packing, exhaust. Rocna, Tigress windlass. Email for more info. $15,000 OBO. San Carlos, Sonora, MX annedslater@gmail.com
35 FT J/35 1984. Pacific Cup/Hawaii vet, well maintained, newish B&G electronics, batteries, cabin paint, cushions, shaft, motor work, solar charging. Comfortable in light air, breezy S.F. Bay, ocean crossing. Lots of extra gear, sails, anchors, etc. Designed as offshore one-design, great cruiser, listed in Sailboat Hall of Fame. Quick, stiff and safe. $35,000. Alameda bill.b.parks@gmail.com (510) 507-2107
36 – 39 FEET SAILBOATS
38 FT HANS CHRISTIAN MK 2 1982. Liveaboard, office, or sail the world. This mostly original “barn find” is on a mooring in San Diego. Boat can be sailed now, but the low-hrs BMW freshwater-cooled diesel engine is currently not running. The engine is not seized and has run in the last few months. The hull has blistering in many areas and is due for an epoxy bottom job. The boat has no electronics, except for NOS autopilot. The teak deck is in disrepair, but could be restored. No deck leaks. Murray bronze winches (IYKYK). All original, ready for minor or major resto. Contact Dave. $30,000. San Diego davidhbrotherton@yahoo.com (619) 913-7834
35.5 FT CAL 36 1966. Offshore cruiser. Westerbeke engine. Recently installed electric toilet and converted rudder to wheel. New headcover. $25,000. San Francisco Pier 39 chris@rubiconyachts.com (415) 2357447
36 FT J/36 1982. Great racer/cruiser. 2021 Quantum Fusion M mainsail, #3 jib, and genoa like new. Raced one season. Forespar carbon spinnakar pole. B&G Zeus 3 chartplotter, radio with cordless hand unit. 2015 upgraded Yanmar 30 hp diesel with 400 hrs. Beam 11.75 ft, draft 6.6 ft. $30,000. Pt. Richmond, CA kmwino@gmail.com (707) 287-6397
39 FT FREEDOM 1984. Cat ketch. 44hp Yanmar. Fair condition. Sails are in good condition. Fuel lines to engine need replacing. Lines on the boat are in fair condition. Boat has mostly been sitting in the dock for about 3 years. We have owned the boat for more than 25 years and she has been sailing mostly in the Bay and Delta. Yes, she has raced in a few Plastic Classics and Jazz Cups. $29,000. South Beach Harbor, S.F. wincheshandles@gmail.com
36 FT CS 36 ‘MERLIN EDITION’ 1988. Exceptionally well maintained 1988 CS 36 “Merlin Edition” (aft cabin). Located at Puerto Escondido Marina, Baja Sur, Mexico (just south of Loreto, BCS0). Owners are motivated due to health issues. Asking $29,500.00 US. $29,500 OBO. Puerto Escondido Marina, Baja California South dfaith@telus.net 778-421-0458
38 FT ALAJUELA 38 1976. ‘Saito’ is a cutter rig that has improved with age under the loving care of her knowledgeable previous owners. This bluewater cruiser is a true ocean voyager with a sweeping full keel for sea-kindliness, speed at sea, and comfortable accommodation. The Alajuela 38 is known for quality engineering and a solid build to take you anywhere in comfort with timeless and unpretentious styling. Volvo Penta D2-55 diesel (55 hp). Fuel tanks: diesel, 48 gal FRP tank integral w/hull, new fuel gauge; plus 9 gal aluminum day tank for diesel heater or reserve for engine. Fuel economy: 0.80 gallons/hour at 2,000 rpm. Dickinson Antarctic diesel heater. Water tanks: 50 gal and 40 gal stainless steel. $60,000 OBO, Trade. Moss Landing, CA mike.sack@sanctuarycruises.com (831) 239-5504
39 ‘FLASHGIRL’ FOR SALE. Warwick M. Tompkins, Jr. just completed an 11K+ NM tour of the Pacific aboard his Wylie 39 Flashgirl. At age 93, he has decided to come ashore. The vessel is at Richmond Yacht Club. She was launched in 2000. Her hull is a production Wylie 39, but everything else is pure Tompkins, executed over the previous decade. She features a powerful fractional rig, with new standing rigging, water ballast, tiller steering, and a unique,very functional interior. She comes with a very cool, stowable, dinghy/tender. There is no asking price, no broker, no commission, and comparables will be impossible to find. It is also fair to say that a deal will hinge more on the cut of your jib than the amount of your offer. Commodore is facing some health challenges. If you are interested in knowing more, contact dick@enersen.org
38 FT DOWNEASTER 38 1975. Free to a good home. Solid bluewater cutter project. Mostly complete, lots of new parts, replacement beta marine engine, 4 anchors, 250′ fresh galvanized chain, new instruments panels and engine gauges, water maker, new electric head, microwave, propane water heater, the list of new and replacement parts goes on… She needs a DIYer with youthful energy to complete. Access available to wood, metal, and upholstery shop to complete the project. Live aboard while working on it? YouTube content opportunity? This is a solid boat! Low-cost back-hauling to San Carlos, Mexico is likely the cheapest option to get it back in the water. Mexican TIP in place. Located in Tucson AZ. $1. Tucson, AZ weswsimpson@yahoo.com (520) 9815540
38 FT HUNTER 386LE 2004. Very clean, freshwater boat. Barrier coat with Interlux 2000. Great Bay or coastal cruiser. Roller-furling main and jib. Cruising spinnaker included. 40 hp Yanmar diesel. $110,000. Rio Vista, Hidden Harbor Marina kmiller@burkettsoffice.com (916) 5081514
39 FT FREYA 2003. Proven famous bluewater cruiser/racer. Every amenity for safety and comfort except air conditioning. Lying San Diego, ready for the Ha-Ha. Turbocharged Yanmar recently rebuilt. Bristol condition. Tall rig, 13 standing riggings, 13 halyards, two autopilots, two chartplotters, windvane steering and much more. Complete suite sails for heavy weather, paraglider spinnaker, Jordan series drogue, Dynaplate grounding to mast, sleeps 6. Watermaker, hydraulic backstay. Email or call. $120,000. San Diego berniekreten@yahoo.com (916) 3356555
WYLIE
36 FT CASCADE 1977. Bluewater-ready turnkey sailboat. 55 hrs on new Yanmar 30 hp, navigation autopilot, leather interior hand-carved wood. Dickinson diesel heater, full head with hot shower, full galley and more. Great liveaboard with large V-berth, comes with transferable slip!. $25,000 OBO. Newport, OR sureshanjie@yahoo.com Suresh (510) 459-8018or Dustin (808) 756-1389
39 FT CAL 40 1964. Legendary Cal 40, built in 1964 and beautifully maintained, groundbreaking performance and timeless lines, is waiting for new adventures. This particular boat has been cared for by an owner who appreciates her pedigree and has invested in key upgrades like new sails, new electronics, autopilot and more. $68,000 price reduced. Richmond Yacht Club odilehines@gmail.com (415) 963-2160
38 FT CARRERA 38 1987. Imported by Sven Svendsen. 2023, mast removed with new standing rigging installed, two new batteries, two new compasses, new bottom paint, new zincs, new service of the outdrive/prop, hydraulic outhaul, vang and mast bend, two-cylinder Volvo recently serviced with oil change/pump/filters, all work done by Svendsen. Two mainsails, two spinnakers, genoa and two roller jibs, spinnaker pole, Ballenger mast and boom. $15,000. Pt. Richmond Marina, CA franzsteinerarchitect@comcast.net (510) 914-1289
39 FT CAL 39-2 1977. ‘Sea Star’ is for sale. A strong race boat suitable for San Francisco Bay conditions. Winner of many local races and well known on the bay, see webpage for details. $38,000 OBO. Stockton, CA bob@bobwalden.com https://tinyurl. com/Buyseastar
40 – 50 FEET SAILBOATS
42 FT TAYANA VANCOUVER 1979. Cruise-ready and beautifully maintained, ‘Sonho’ is a USCG-documented vessel with a Beta 43 diesel with low hrs, watermaker, solar panels, new electronics, complete sail inventory (roller-furling jib, spinnaker, and mainsail with StackPack), fully enclosed cockpit (with interchangeable mesh and “glass” panels), stainless safety rails and recent bottom job. Her current owners lived aboard for 13 years in Alameda before heading south to cruise the Sea of Cortez in 2022. She is berthed in a transferable slip in Marina de La Paz, BCS, MX. This is a rare opportunity to own a thoughtfully refitted bluewater vessel. Her owners have gone to the Dark Side and are ready to pass her on to someone who will love her as deeply as they have. $70,000. La Paz, BCS, MX lapazyachtsinfo@gmail.com +52 (612) 123-1948 https://tinyurl.com/y5r9spdn
42 FT GULFSTAR 1979. Center cockpit sloop ‘Footloose’ is like new as she has been completely painted with 5 coats of Awlgrip paint (2 primer, 3 coats of paint) $20,000. Completely reupholstered with light gray leather and all-new drapes and dodger canvas ($10,000). New Force 10 propane stove, new Raritan toilet, and all thru-hulls replaced ($10,000). Complete complement of Raymarine electronics including: autopilot, radar, E7 MFD, depthsounder/ fish finder. AIS send/receive, 3,500 watt inverter/charger. Beta 4 Kubota diesel (55hp) replaced the old Perkins in 2017 for a total cost of $30,000. In-mast and jib roller furling. Stainless barbecue, swim ladder. Price has been reduced for quick sale. $50,000 OBO. Vallejo Yacht Club, Vallejo, CA fcgmc@lmi.net (707) 330-7712
41 FT ISLANDER FREEPORT 41 1977. Roomy teak interior. Raymarine electronics (E80 display, radar, GPS, charts, depth, autopilot). Nissan SD22 diesel. The North Sails jib on Harken furler is in excellent condition, as is the North Sails main. The staysail and mizzen are still original. This boat had gentle use during the 34 years that I have owned her. The plumbing needs work, but the very attractive asking price reflects that. Contact me by email if you want to take a look at her. $19,000. Alameda plhill1991@gmail.com
42 FT CATALINA 1992. Well maintained fin-keel, 3-cabin model in La Paz for quick island trips or extensive Sea of Cortez cruising. Great family/couples boat. Upgraded electrical, 700W solar, watermaker, B&G plotter, Simrad radar, Raymarine linear autopilot, Starlink, EPIRB, dinghy davits, 2×4-gal propane, etc. New 30-in lifelines, stanchions, rails, pulpits, perch seats in custom arch. Very clean Yanmar 50hp engine; new shaft seal and coupler. Recent survey. Ten-ft aluminum RIB dink and 5hp outboard. $95,000. La Paz, BCS, MX tuulivoyages@gmail.com (206) 2359609 https://tinyurl.com/72haxht3
48 FT SUNCOAST 1980. Type of vessel: ketch. Estimated speed: 10 kt power, 6-8 kt sail. Built Netherlands 1980. Time of lay-up: fall 2012. Hull: length 48-ft, beam 15-ft, draft 7-ft. Frames: varied dimensional steel. Topsides single skin steel plate, 1/4 thick estimated; bottom single skin steel plate, 1/4 thick estimated; deck and bulkheads steel plate. Hull layout: V-berth, forward head, forward triple berth, settee/berth, chart station, galley, captain’s berth, engine/machinery/maintenance room, after master bath, after head, straight inboard diesel engine auxiliary powered. New bow thruster (2010), electronics, autopilot, forward underwater sonar. Six-cyl Leyland diesel, midline, 350 gal water, 250 gal fuel. Pictures at website. $54,900. Cleveland, OH maudeij@yahoo.com.au (954) 2352527 http://guapasailboat.com
44 FT RELIANCE 44 1988. If you’re in the market for a capable, safe, and well-prepared offshore cruising boat, your search ends here. ‘Canise’ offers exceptionally high build quality, storage, and safe offshore navigation. Modified full keel with cutaway forefoot provides the benefits of good directional stability and a responsive helm. She is in very good condition and priced to sell. Roller furling head and cutter sails, in-boom roller furling. Recent upgrades in 2021/2022 include Rocna anchor system, Monitor windvane, self-righting life raft (re-certified 2025), watermaker, solar, drogue, dinghy, outboard, etc. New chainplates (2025). Full cover. Fully cruise-equipped and ready for her next adventure. Email for details and additional photos. $130,000. Paradise Village, Puerto Vallarta, MX keith@mariposatraining.com (510) 3878130
49 FT SAMSON C-DEUCE KETCH 2012. ‘Dancing Dolphin’ was built by Howard White and many expert craftsmen over a span of 40 years. Equipped with a 371 GMC diesel with a new transmission. She was built for cruising. Regular haulouts have been in Santa Cruz. Handling is easy with bow thrusters and new cutlass bearing. Rigging done by John Hansen, Pacific Rigging and Electronics by Beckman Marine. Spacious interior, beautiful finishes, large work space and storage. Looking for a buyer to live out our dreams. $100,000. Pillar Point Harbor, Half Moon Bay howardandkathywhite@gmail.com (650) 728-3149
50 FT HUDSON FORCE 50 1978. Price lowered for quick sale. Center cockpit ketch, Lehman 80hp, good condition 4100 hrs. Sails good, Rigging good, aft cabin queen/windows, Yanmar genset, spruce mainmast, aluminum mizzen. $40,000. Berkeley Tcparfitt@yahoo.com (707) 861-2954
40 FT ENDEAVOUR 40 1983. In excellent condition. The boat is in a slip at Marina Real in San Carlos, Sonora, MX. My wife and I have owned the boat for 10 years. The engine is a 2005 Yanmar 4JH4E 54hp with 1649 hrs. The included inflatable is a 2011 hard-bottom 10.4-ft Achilles with a 15hp Yamaha 2 cycle outboard. The Doyle mainsail was purchased new about 6 years ago. See URL for 200 pics I dumped into my AMZ photos. Equipment: See listing url pictures with previous pictures of Yacht world listing from 10 years ago. Most of the listed equipment is still with the boat. Payment by US bank to bank transfer only. No cash or check. $48,000. San Carlos, MX rode7runner@yahoo.com (520) 4012352 https://tinyurl.com/32twna5z
40 FT JEANNEAU SUN ODYSSEY 40 2003. ‘Stardust’ is now on the market due to the health of the owner. The first owner had her for 20 years and outfitted her for bluewater adventures: Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska. His preparation and modifications were thoughtful and professionally executed. I have owned her since March 2023 and sailed her around the Salish Sea and in club racing on Wednesdays. She is in excellent condition, has superior handling characteristics, is both weatherly and relatively fast, easily singlehanded, can sleep 7, and is warm and comfortable below — the best all-around boat one can imagine. $135,000. Tacoma, WA dstromquist@comcast.net (360) 6069043
47 FT WYLIECAT 48 2000. If you like to sail fast without working hard; if you like to sail without waiting for a crew to show up; if you prefer to avoid “white-knuckle” stressful sailing; if you don’t want to worry about shrouds, stays, rigging; if you think simple is safe; if you don’t want to duck the boom; if you don’t want to spend $400K+ on a new one, then this is the boat for you!!! Well maintained and caredfor, ‘Ahava’ is for sale, or is it sail?
$115,000 OBO. San Francisco Marina mksabra@aol.com (415) 320-2233 https://tinyurl.com/bdhxxk5p
42 FT VAN DE STADT REBEL 42 1977. English-built boat, sailed across the Atlantic shorthanded with no problems. Great sea boat. New standing rigging and lifelines 2024, Perkins 4.108 diesel with BorgWarner V-drive, regularly maintained, works great. New slab-reefing mainsail 2022 and six foresails. In great sailing condition, needs modern electronics. Electric Lofrans windlass and self-tailing 44 Lewmar cockpit winches. Hydraulic steering with wheel. Recent lead acid batteries. Gimbaled gas cooker with oven. Manual and electric bilge pumps. $25,000. Channel Islands Harbor, CA philip.vaughan@gmail.com (626) 475-8522
47 FT TED CARPENTIER LIDO SHIPYARD 1957. Ketch with 11-ft beam, 7-ft draft. Hull is strip-planked tongue and grooved. This vessel was built by naval architect Ted Carpentier, who also worked as an engineer for Hughes Aircraft and was a personal friend of Howard Huges. It was custom-built for the CEO of United Airlines (the original spinnaker is in United Airlines colors). I have owned this boat since 1996. The interior has been refinished, Elco EN7000 motor installed, teak deck and a new carbon fiber mast and boom and new toilet are ready to be installed. Coast Guard Vessel documented. She is a fine vessel in the San Francisco Bay area. $85,000 OBO. San Francisco Bay Area vksbo@hotmail.com (510) 967-8421
49 FT CUSTOM CHOATE PETERSON SLOOP 1988. Solid performance racer/cruiser. Spacious headroom, storage, large galley and main saloon, with roomy aft cabin and separate head. Rod rigging, great winches and running rigging layout. $70,000 OBO or Trade. Sausalito, CA libertyshipmarina@comcast.net (415) 613-3665
51 & OVER SAILBOATS
52 FT BENETEAU 52.3 2006. Owner’s version. Buy in Mexico and save broker commission and sales tax. Start your cruise with fat pockets. Title and funds transfer in the US. Located in Barra de Navidad. $250,000. Barra de Navidad, MX (360) 317-4722
CLASSIC BOATS
27 FT NOR’SEA 27 2002. ‘Plume’ is among the final hulls built to Lyle Hess’s legendary pocket-cruiser design. Maintained in Bristol condition, with low engine hrs and outfitted for offshore sailing, she is offered by her original owners with a custom-built 2009 Pacific trailer. Full listing, inventory, photos and our adventures aboard can be found at URL. If you’re interested, email us and tell us a little about why you’d like to be her next skipper. We’re looking for a buyer who recognizes and values her pedigree and care. $64,000. Brisbane Marina, CA plume@flupes.org https://plume.flupes. org/
46 FT FELLOWS’ STEWART YAWL 1931. ‘Cheerio II’, 1931 46-ft yawl, formerly owned by actor Errol Flynn. Three-time winner of her class in the Newport to Ensenada Race; first to finish in the 2024 McNish Classic Yacht Race; winner of “Best Represented Theme” in the 2025 Newport Beach Wooden Boat Festival. Google “Cheerio II” for photos, videos, and articles about the boat, a SoCal classic! Recent survey available. $100,000 OBO. Channel Islands Harbor jmcnish@earthlink.net (510) 846-4178 https://tinyurl.com/2bsw8djr
32 FT FRIENDSHIP SLOOP 1947. Built by Paul Luke in Boothbay, ME. Well found, excellent shape; longleaf yellow pine on oak. Teak decks. Sails: main, staysail, jib and drifter. All gear and 11-ft Achilles incl. Sails like a dream. $19,000. Ventura, CA peterwoodboats@gmail.com
38 FT HENRY J. Gielow Cutter 1935. Rebuilt over 14 years, ready to sail, member of the Master Mariners. Email for photo spread and comprehensive narrative. $49,500. Sierra Point Marina, Brisbane, CA richardsalvini@yahoo.com (650) 9964215
FT
Built in San Francisco in 1917 by Alphonz
zzi, this classic Bay cruiser has been award-winning in the Classic Yacht Association. Well maintained in a covered slip in San Rafael, this vessel has recently been hauled for a bottom job and other work, bringing her to excellent condition. Current survey is available. Powered by Isuzu diesel with low hrs. Illness forces sale. $20,000 OBO. San Rafael Yacht Harbor stickypatoo@gmail.com (707) 882-1726
MULTIHULLS
31 FT CORSAIR F31 1996. The F-31 remains one of the most influential production folding trimarans ever created, beloved for its fast yet accessible sailing experience. $72,955. San Francisco/Brisbane mevered@gmail.com (415) 745-0384 http://www.corsairf31.com
34
LABRUZZI 1917.
LaBru-
24 FT CORSAIR F24 MK 2 2001. Main/ jib are Schurr Sails carbon. Smyth Code 0 on Coligo furler. Calvert asym with sock. Synthetic shrouds. Sails/ shrouds new 2022. SailPro 6 (2022). Raymarine wind, depth. Garmin plotter/ fishfinder. Pelagic autopilot. Rotating boom. Two anchors with chain and rode. Anti-fouling paint. VHF, masthead. Lithium battery 100Ah. Lots of extras; will send pics. Negotiable: inflatable dinghy, radar (uninstalled), Facnor furler (uninstalled). Aluminum trailer (2022), stainless disc brakes. Serious inquiries only — answer my questions about sailing. $33,000 Negotiable. Cedar City, UT ernesthardin@gmail.com (702) 630-4468
POWER & HOUSEBOATS
27 FT SCOUT 275 DORADO 2017. Ready for cruising, fishing, and all watersport activities. Numerous lounging options, telescopic swim ladder, custom fiberglass hardtop, and outstanding fishing features make this a versatile, family-friendly vessel. Multiple aftermarket upgrades include Garmin radar, fishing rod rocket launcher, and custom removable center bow cushion for maximum lounging. Other features: Bluetooth stereo with JL Audio upgrade, electric head upgrade, 152-quart cooler, cockpit sink, LED underwater and cockpit lighting, foldaway stern seat, in-floor fish boxes with pump, rod holders, outriggers, tackle drawers, nine-gallon waste tank, 14-gallon freshwater tank, and 25-gallon bait well. Boat has been drydocked and shrink-wrapped annually, and all required and recommended service/maintenance completed (all records available). Bow and cockpit cover, lines, fenders, life preservers included. $148,500. Half Moon Bay, CA leslienordin@gmail.com (781) 385-9352
41.6 FT RIVERCITY FLOATING HOME 2004. FHA 1544 in Tiburon. Best offer above min price of $180k. After Oct. 10, 2025. One bedroom one bath. Aluminum plate hull nice and tight. Possible slip at Tiburon YC for qualifying boaters. Scheduled for haul out Best offer over $180,000. Oct 10 th . Contact Joel 415 235 7447 . perfect for a private Dock. 14 X 41.5. $180,000. Tiburon YC e.stancil53@gmail.com (650) 771-1945
41 FT ROUGHWATER 41 PILOTHOUSE 1985. A must-see! Cleanly maintained/ upgraded. Single Detroit diesel sips while making swift way. Superb coastal cruiser — fishing/diving/living. Comfortably sleeps eight. Two heads, shower, storage, great galley/saloon, huge stateroom aft, roomy forward stateroom w/half bath. Clean and ready. U.S. $79,950.00 cladyo7seas@gmail.com (310) 430-1769
PARTNERSHIPS
BENETEAU 473 PARTNERSHIP IN PACIFIC MEXICO/BAJA. Great opportunity to cruise Mexico. Third partner wanted, 2004 Beneteau 473. Cruise-ready. This season San Blas to Manzanillo. Davits, dinghy, outboard, solar, Starlink, dive gear, well outfitted and maintained. 1/3 ownership $50,000. New bottom paint. Documented, surveyed, insured. Contact Greg, (415) 407-0491, grw@gwilson. com. $50,000. La Cruz, Puerto Vallarta grw@gwilson.com (415) 407-0491
LOOKING FOR BOAT PARTNERSHIP. Looking for partnership on 30-50-ft sailboat, preferably East Bay. Equity and non-equity considered. Have 20+ years of experience sailing on the Bay and chartering internationally. I have partnered successfully on a 31-ft Beneteau for five years. Now I have a small sailing dog that I want to sail with me and the others are allergic. Looking for a clean boat in good condition that is sailed regularly, and responsible, nice sail partners. Berkeley ddodgesf@gmail.com
34 FT CATALINA 2007. Selling my 1/5 share in this partnership boat. The boat is in good condition. It is sailed frequently and well maintained. Expenses are divided equally five ways. This is an equity share. $15,000. Emery Cove D Dock mattseely63@gmail.com (916) 214-6288
BERTHS & SLIPS
AWESOME 50 FT SLIP PIER 39 SAN FRANCISCO. For sale: Stunning city views, 15-ft+ beam, 50-ft length. New cleats, dock box, power pedestal, and hose management. Perfectly located for entire Bay Area coverage and beyond. Very easy access, great maintenance team, parking, and more. $24,000. Slip G-32, Pier 39 Marina greg.rossmann@gjrcap.com (650) 740-0263
EMERY COVE BOAT SLIP FOR RENT. Berths for rent. Emery Cove Yacht Harbor 35-ft = $472.50/month C dock and 40-ft = $540/month E dock. Dockominium-run marina in Emeryville. emerycove.com. Brandnew docks, aluminum with Ipe wood deck, brand-new restrooms, beautiful grounds and just dredged. Great location center of S.F. Bay. Emeryville, CA studio6161@icloud.com http://www. emerycove.com
REDWOOD CITY MARINA SLIPS AVAILABLE. Slips 30′-75′ at great rates! Amenities: parking, bathrooms, laundry, pump-out, free wi-fi, keyless entry. Guest berths also available. Call for availability. 451 Seaport Court, Redwood City, CA 94063 crevay@redwoodcityport.com (650) 306-4150 http://www.redwoodcityport. com/marina
PROPERTY FOR SALE OR RENT
44-FT BOAT SLIP WITH TOWNHOUSE. Makani Kai Marina — Unit #35 | Kaneohe Bay. Sailors, paddlers, and power boaters, this is the one! A rarely available marina-front end-unit townhouse in Makani Kai Marina — and it comes with a deeded 44-ft boat slip (#162) included in the sale. Bring your cutter, cruiser, or cat and slide right in. Inside, the home features gorgeous koa hardwood floors, breezy trade winds, and that hard-to-find blend of privacy and marina lifestyle. Step out your door and be on Kaneohe Bay in minutes — the sandbar, the reefs, and open-water sailing at your fingertips. Makani Kai Marina is one of Oahu’s last true boating communities with every townhouse owning its own slip. Gated, pet-friendly, landscaped grounds, pool, BBQ area. $1,125,000. Kaneohe, HI jc@oceanregroup.com (808) 687-1890 https://youtu.be/TNqcKy8iNEg
BERKELEY MARINA OFFICES FOR RENT. Seeking water-related tenants for two office suites at 125–127 University Ave., Berkeley Marina. Suite sizes: 1,748-1,946 sq ft. Rent: $2.50/ sq ft/month. Email or call for more information. $4,370. Berkeley, CA 94710 jabedon@berkeleyca.gov (510) 9816706 https://tinyurl.com/BerkeleyMarinaOffice
FIJI: WATERFRONT FREEHOLD PROPERTY. The perfect Fiji resort-hotel investment or a place to build your dream escape. This 19-acre freehold property near Labasa on Vanua Levu offers unbeatable value, natural beauty, and development potential. Adjacent to existing eco-resort!. $220,000. Labasa, Fiji framegreg@gmail.com (415) 405-6384 https://tinyurl.com/49mket4d
DRAMATIC WATERFRONT ALAMEDA TOWNHOME. Dramatic waterfront Alameda 3BR/2.5 BA townhome with a private 44-ft deep-water slip attached to the property. An impressive 2,054 sq ft with multiple living spaces all designed to overlook the glistening Ballena Bay. $1,249,000 leah@leahtounger.com (510) 701-6497 https://tinyurl.com/3wdmepyu
CLUBS & MEMBERSHIPS
CLUB NAUTIQUE MEMBERSHIP FOR SALE. Learn to sail, Save ???, S.F. Bay and beyond. Club Nautique membership, Ultimate and Coastal Passage Maker. Contact for details. Far cheaper than owning a boat!. $9,000. S.F. Bay kmj347@gmail.com (925) 766-7484
SOUTH OF THE BORDER
PLAN YOUR MEXICAN GETAWAY NOW. At the gorgeous Cielo Y Mar condos. Located in Punta Mita, 35 minutes from Puerto Vallarta, available to rent from private owner. On the beach, 10 feet from the water, they offer spectacular views of ocean and mountains, the biggest infinity pool in the area, an endless beach, great surf breaks, great fishing, tremendous views of whales, bird life and the islands. While uncrowded and tranquil, just a five-minute walk to several waterfront restaurants. Choose from a spacious, beautifully furnished one- or three-bedroom unit, or an amazing two-story penthouse with lovely shade trellis on the top floor. To reserve, call or email Dona de Mallorca. puntamitabeachfrontcondos@gmail.com (415) 269-5165
BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES
SPINNAKER SAILING SCHOOL FOR SALE — SF BAY. After 45 years, Spinnaker Sailing San Francisco is ready for new ownership. This is a turnkey, profitable operation at South Beach Harbor location—immediate dockside access near Oracle Park—with 12 coveted super-prime berths. Sale includes a 1,350 sq. ft. waterfront building (structure owned; land leased from the Port of SF), a fleet of 11 boats from 21’–35′ plus two 35’–37′ yachts on lease-back, 30 sails for the boats, four trailers, classroom, workshop, galley, tools, and a highly qualified, dedicated staff. Established systems, permits, and procedures enable seamless continuity and growth. Founder will assist with transition and remain available for consulting. Optional add-on: the long-standing Rendezvous Charters corporate charter company. $395,000. San Francisco Bay rendezvous@earthlink.net (415) 8678056 https://tinyurl.com/2cva5fyn
PUERTO VALLARTA BUSINESS FOR SALE. Discover the exciting chance to own ‘YUMMIES Mexico,’ a frozen food sensation with a perfected menu and a loyal customer base aged 40-80. This successful Puerto Vallarta business is now on the market and ready for a new chapter. Explore detailed information on website and FB: https://tinyurl. com/mjb9v9je. La Cruz, Nayarit, MX yummiesbydonyteri@gmail.com 52 (322) 275-3322 http://www.Yummies-Mexico.com.mx
JOB OPPORTUNITIES
HARBORMASTER RICHMOND YACHT CLUB. We are looking to hire a full-time Harbormaster. This job requires management of our wet and dry slips, light maintenance and repair of our harbor, lockers, 2 hoists, parking areas and most importantly customer service skills for our member-owned private club. This is a full-time job working Fridays through Tuesdays (with Wednesdays and Thursdays off) but must have the flexibility to change schedule as required by the Club. One must have some computer skills (Word doc, Excel, Microsoft Outlook) and communicate well with staff and committee members. Please email cover letter and résumé. Richmond, CA manager@richmondyc.org (510) 6094480 https://www.richmondyc.org
RENDEZVOUS CHARTERS — SF
BAY SAILING CHARTER BUSINESS FOR SALE. Own a storied charter company on San Francisco Bay! Rendezvous Charters, founded 40 years ago, features a 1985 Santa Cruz 50 “Yukon Jack”, USCG-certified for 25 passengers, fully restored in 2023 with new engine, rigging, electronics, bottom work, and paint. The sale includes three super-prime berths (46′ A1, A3, plus guest dock space to 100′), and a 45 sq ft storage unit. Benefit from an established database of 25,000 past clients, existing social media presence, and the option to purchase alongside Spinnaker Sailing School. Serious inquiries only. $295,000. SF Bay rendezvous@earthlink.net (415) 8678056 https://tinyurl.com/2pjtx3h7
MEMBERS ACQUISITION AND ENGAGEMENT MANAGER. Club Nautique is the premier sailing school and yacht charter company in the Bay Area, with two locations, in Alameda and Sausalito. We offer classes, sailing and powerboat charters, skippered charters, corporate events, and member events. We are looking for a Member Acquisition and Engagement Manager in Alameda. This role leads efforts to grow the member base and deepen member involvement, with a focus on onboarding, upgrading, and retention strategies. This role also serves as a primary point of contact for prospective members, guiding them through the inquiry process and converting interest into active memberships. If you are ready to become a valued, contributing member of the Club Nautique team, please send your résumé and cover letter. Alameda michael@clubnautique.net https:// tinyurl.com/83sm22aj
NOW HIRING: ASA CERTIFIED INSTRUCTOR. SailTime San Francisco seeking certified ASA instructor with current OUPV license. Must be reliable, organized, and excellent communicator. Pay: $30–$40/hr based on certification and experience. Contact us to see our fleet and chat!. $40. San Francisco, CA Mollie@sailtime.com (415) 869-2861 https://tinyurl.com/yc8537t5
JOIN OUR TEAM OF INSTRUCTORS. Spinnaker Sailing in Redwood City is looking for ASA-certified sailing instructors to teach out of our Redwood City Marina location. Part-time, flexible schedules, midweek and/or weekends. Please contact Rich or Bob by phone or email. Redwood City Marina office@spinnakersailing.com (650) 3631390 https://tinyurl.com/y7b2587w
EXPERIENCED SAILBOAT RIGGER WANTED. Rig shop in business for over 30 years is looking for an experienced rigger to add to our team. Excellent pay is available depending on rigging knowledge. Send a description of your rigging/boat work experience. Sausalito southbeachriggers@gmail.com (415) 331-3400
MARINE CANVAS INSTALLER POSITION. Part or full time. Compass Canvas is hiring a marine canvas installer to join our team in Richmond, CA. This role offers competitive pay and the opportunity to work on quality marine projects. Requirements: 2+ years experience in the marine industry; detail-oriented and reliable a must; experience with canvas installation is a plus. If you’re experienced, take pride in your work, and want to be part of a dedicated team, we’d love to hear from you. Apply now by sending your résumé to David. Point Richmond david@compass-canvas.com (415) 299-3415 http://compass-canvas.com
LATITUDE 38 ‘AMBASSADOR’. Latitude 38 is seeking an “Ambassador.” The ideal candidate is a sailor based in the SF Bay Area, is friendly, outgoing, well-organized and a self-starter with excellent communication skills. They are someone who can work independently as well as manage a team of volunteers. An ambassador encourages enthusiasm, understands the scope and goal of a project and is able to appreciate, respect and organize a team of volunteers to execute a project with efficiency and eagerness. This is an ideal position for someone who is financially secure and looking to stay active and social, and is excited to be part of our vibrant sailing community. Meet and greet the great people who help us distribute the magazine. Read about a few of them here: www.latitude38.com/ lectronic/meet-great-people. Email Penny with AMBASSADOR in the subject line. This is a volunteer position. SF Bay Area Penny@latitude38.com
SAILING SCIENCE CENTER – CONTRACT AND VOLUNTEER POSITIONS OPEN. Community Engagement Coordinator, Graphic Artist, Photographer(s) wanted as contractors or volunteers. Volunteer docents wanted for educational science exhibitions. Ask about other roles. info@sailingscience.org (510) 390-5727 https://www.sailingscience.org/
LICENSED CAPTAIN WANTED. Wanted: Licensed Captain with towing endorsement for TowBoatUS./Vessel Assist on the San Francisco Bay and Delta. Preferred if you live by SF waterfront, Alameda or Bethel Island areas. towboatus.bay.delta@gmail.com (925) 382-4422 www.towboatusdelta.com
TWO HARBORS HARBOR PATROL
POSITIONS AVAILABLE. Positions available for 2023 season! Two Harbors Harbor Department, on the west end of Catalina Island. Looking for experienced boat operators for seasonal harbor patrol positions (March–October). Harbor patrol assigns and facilitates the use of 700+ moorings on the west end of Catalina Island and assists with transporting passengers to and from shore. USCG license required for passenger transport, seasonal mooring included for patrol personnel with liveaboard vessels. Rates from $18-$21/hr. Two Harbors, Catalina Jrconner@scico.com (310) 510-4201
NON PROFIT
DONATE YOUR BOAT. The Bay Area Association of Disabled Sailors strives to make sailing accessible to people with disabilities. BAADS is always on the lookout for donated boats to support its mission. Help an all-volunteer organization while receiving a charitable tax deduction. boatdonations@baads.org (415) 532-9831
MISCELLANEOUS
LOOKING FOR 24 FT PIVER TRIMARAN ‘NO NAME&’. We’re former owners of the plywood 24-ft Piver trimaran that sailed around the world in the ’70s. The boat’s last known location was San Diego. We’d appreciate hearing from anyone who might know the whereabouts of ‘No Name.’ wolfinds@mindspring.com (415) 8063334
AMPLE POWER 4159S LARGE FRAME ALTERNATOR. Brand-new Ample Power alternator that was stored on board as a backup alternator while cruising Mexico. The model is 4159S large frame and never used. It was stored in a dry pack for years. $300. Grants Pass, OR john@warren-peace.us (510) 418-3006
Only available to new subscribers or returning subscribers (lapsed more than 6 months)
We’re glad you do! AND if you want to ensure you can keep getting your monthly dose of print pleasure then LIFT IT and GIFT IT! Get someone else hooked and help us keep print available.
Art Gallery & Framing (510) 236-1401 pam@jimdewitt.com
