2014 Fiasco Stories Here

[Philpott]

The Race Deck asked for stories during the race. Here are some from:
Fly By Night: "while dropping anchor we lost about 3/4 mile"
Smokin Joe: "we are calling in to retire. We took a hard knock down, lost all our equipment overboard ... the crew's pretty shaken up..."
Lightwave: "race committee, we're out of beer, so we're calling it a day"
Unknown vessel: "We're retiring back to Alameda and bound for glory!"
Stink Eye: "we've ducked into Horseshoe Cove and are waiting for this storm to subside after which we plan to emerge and continue the race"
and
the female captain of one of the many ferries: "Race Committee, there are dozens of sailboats blocking my vessel's passage. Could you get on the radio and tell them to get out of my way?"

 

[pogen]

Wow, those 'ferry' tourboats are really a piece of work. They are not deep draft vessels constrained to a channel (otherwise, they couldn't get in to Pier 39) but they act like they are the Exxon bloody Valdez.

 

[bluewater_ny]

For us it was the 9-bridge fiasco. We crossed the Golden Gate 9 times before calling it a day.. Caught in a maelstrom together with about 30 other boats next to the North Tower. Constance #346

 

[everydaysailor]

Pogen, the vessels exiting 39 would likely argue they are operating in a constrained fairway and we are impeding passage.
Driving a 100ft vessel out/into there is stressful enough but when you're limited in horsepower facing a 3knot plus current, we'll....
Limiting buoys may be a necessary evil during years where there is peaking ebb round noon.
As for the vessel trying to get in laying on the horn, yeah, that was annoying.
I skipped this year in favor of working for a different ferry operator and enjoyed watching you intrepid souls give it your all- (I think I freaked Dark and Stormy out by giving a rousing one man applause from my boat around 1930!)
The only issue I had was Beowulf heading home with no lights crossing my bow near Alcatraz in the black - not even the wave of a flashlight (but a surprisingly decent radar target). How such apparently fine sailors can have such a lack of judgement blows me away. I'll be on the course next year fer surz. Looking forward to the Corinthian.

 

[Now&Zen]

We on Now & Zen had a great day. We got to use our new headsail, we got to practice flying the spinnaker, the skipper (me) got to do foredeck because the crew had an injured knee, we got to practice anchoring and had a lovely lunch about 30 yards off of Crissy Fields beach, and we got a very nice view of the entrance to Horseshoe Cove. Oh and after motoring through Raccoon Strait we had a lovely sail back home to Richmond!

Thanks Race Committee!!

 

[jlberkeley]

For the most part, our race took place in the small area between the fort mason piers and aquatic park. There were a handful of us short-tacking there for a few hours "we'll get you on starboard next time!". Still a beautiful and fun day. Thanks SSS!

 

[sleddog]

Except for paucity of wind, a beautiful winter day on the Bay. Most 3BF participants are to be congratulated on their seamanship and keeping a sense of humor. Anchoring in swirling currents or drifting backwards out the Gate is a trying experience. Throw in commercial traffic of all description, especially some big boys coming into the Bay at double digit speed, and many of us had our hearts in our throats at least once.

The toot fest began early, with engineless DRAGONSONG being excused from further participation for interfering with an inbound ship. I heard at least five more 5 Blast Danger Signals in different parts of the Bay, including two in the vicinity of the Richmond Long Wharf: one from a VLCC tanker and one from a tug pushing a barge.

Brings up an interesting question. There were boats racing that lacked engines or the means to move out of harms way in the windless conditions.

At least two racers found the boulder near Yellow Bluff, marked on charts with a "4" (feet of water), near the entrance to Horseshoe Cove, 50 yards SW of Pt. Cavallo. No serious damage reported.

I think I saw DARK AND STORMY going clockwise around the course, under a monster Code Zero spinnaker. I could be wrong, but after DARK AND STORMY rounded Blackaller, she went down the City Front, crossed over to Angel Island, and disappeared ahead down Raccoon Straits. Congrats to them!

It was perfect conditions for Code Zeros, those big, light mast head spinnakers that can be flown upwind. Even the venerable YUCCA was using a masthead Code Zero as she approached Red Rock at sunset.

The lead boats that went clockwise before time expired were OUTSIDER, three Moore 24's, and CALIFORNIA CONDOR. After rounding TI and Red Rock, they disappeared into the twilight near Raccoon Straits. And ran out of what little wind they had.

Thank you 3BF committee!!

 

[BobJ]

3BF results will be made final at 1900 tonight, so today is your last chance to challenge the R/C on your posted mean lower-low average reverse polish notated drifting speed.

16 lucky winners have been logged for future R/C duty.

 

[Kirwan]

First off, let me join the chorus and send a big THANK YOU to the organizers and RC for this event. Even without wind and getting swept out the gate, I had a good time.

I realized I only took a couple of pictures for the whole day, and even then only because I thought I was going to record a bad crash. Don't know if this was one of the people who had to drop out for interfering, but they sure got 5 blasts.



I think the freighter's bow wake is about to hit the sailboat in this pic.

 

[Now&Zen]

I figure I tied for 2nd place overall.

 

[Haggers]

Thanks for hanging in there Race Commitee!

2014 3 Bridge Fiasco – Dark and Stormy – Jonathan Hunt & Rodney Hagebols

The Three Bridge has been on Jonathans bucket list for some time now. The 24th Jan was Jon’s birthday so why not try and win this thing for him. We both went to the skippers meeting on Wednesday night and found the talk by Kame and the race committee well worth the trip. What I got from Kame’s chat was to tick the boxes you can while you can regardless of the forecast and keep your options open. That being said we still looked closely at the sailorsenergy data.
Dark and Stormy is kept in Alameda and we docked out at 0800hrs to reach GGYC by 0915hrs. On the way to GGYC we had a good chance to check out the wind and current around TI. When went passed TI there was zero wind, so something had to change for us to decide to go ACW. As we approached GGYC area the breeze started to fill from the Easterly direction. Problem was that there was no wind beyond city front to the East. Our start was around 1021hrs so we tried to stay out of the way and watch the other classes get underway. This was great for us as it gave us a good indicator as to how the race track was playing out. We could see boats parking at Pier 39 as expected but we could see boats making their way through Richardson Bay successfully. Our biggest concern for the CW course was Raccoon Straits.
By start time we weren’t convinced in either direction so we took Kame’s advice and sailed to Blackaller and back up the beach towards StFYC to buy some time. The wind kept getting lighter to the point we anchored off StFYC. This was pretty nice as we got to watch the whole race course and have a bite to eat at the same time. We noticed the boats in the middle of the bay sailing in a slight breeze. Finally Jon said we gotta make a choice or we aren’t going to make it anyway (The call of the day). So we pulled up anchor and made for the breeze in the middle of the bay. By that stage all the shipping had gone through thank God. We noted boats that had attempted to cross near Golden Gate got sucked out to sea. We wanted to cross fast while we could so we hoisted the Code Zero and sailed low and fast. We got to within ½ a mile of Raccoon when the breeze shut down and I threw the anchor over again. It wasn’t long before Jon made me pick it up again and we attempted to sail.
At this point, something weird happened, the boat started to make way ever so slightly and we began to move away from the boats around us, boats that were less than 20ft away. We continued this slow escape and it wasn’t long before they were specs on the horizon. Then as we entered Raccoon a Westerly filled to blow us into and nearly through the Straits. We could see boats towards Richmond sailing in NWesterly so knew there would be a breeze change as we exited the straits. So we tried to leave from the North Tiburon side. As it turned out, this paid huge dividends. A nice 6kn NW breeze and a weakening Ebb got us around red rock in good shape, but we could see that the breeze was weakening all the time. At this stage we thought we were doing pretty good but didn’t have any other boats to guage off.
From Red rock to TI we sailed pretty much rumb line except for a small gybe early to get some East in away from the dead zone on the East side of Angel Island. We sailed with the A3 nealry all the way to TI where we peeled to a Jib and then Code Zero to get through the Lee of TI. By this stage the Flood was running and we got through the East side of TI quickly. We knew the last leg was going to be grueling because of the flood and light patchy wind. Some boats cheered us on as we went passed them about to sail uphill so to speak. We chose the sail on the TI shore as far as we could, must have been 10-15 tacks, almost going nowhere. The tacking angles were horrendous because of the flood messing with the Apparent wind. Finally we thought we had enough Northerly in to try and sail across the channel to City front without getting sucked into the South Bay under the Bridge. So off we went, constantly trimming and looking for any wind that might help us. There was massive shear in the wind. At the top of the mast we had westerly and at sea level we had Northerly. So we just trimmed and steered to the middle tell tales on the sails as the best of both worlds so to speak. We watched a J24 to leeward of us get sucked under the Bay Bridge and feared we were next. Then again a little sniff of wind gave us an escape to the North so we tacked onto Port and made some good headway. We did one more tack into City front towards the Cruise ship and Jon said “we can do this, we can finish!!” Immediately I said “Shut up Jon!”, What the heck are you thinking? Anyway lots of fun moments and more to come. Still flooding and we could see that there was very little wind close to the docks and ship but we could see some breeze filling towards Alcatraz. So…cross the channel to Alcatraz on a flood then have to come back?? We had to do something so we went for it. Low and behold the wind filled and we smoked up towards Alcatraz in the edge of the cone. Once there we tacked over to Starboard and had great angle back to the city in pressure.
This was the final bit and the clock was ticking. We sailed across the Fort Mason and the breeze slowly died. Jon was starting to freak as the water glassed out. It seemed like there was some early ebb near the shore so not all hope was lost. Jon was getting a little jumpy but managed to keep it together. We did another tack out to sea and prayed for some breeze. Wow it really is our day as another puff rolled in which allowed us to tack over to lay the finish. Approaching the breakwater near GGYC some M24’s who had retired cheered us on, as did many of the crowd at GGYC . With flash lights blazing and Jon cheering we crossed the line. Shortly after we learned we were the first to finish, that’s when Jon really started to lose it…haha. Jon could be heard all the way down Oakland Estuary as we approached our berth. It was a great day of sailing, HAPPY BIRTHDAY JON!

 

[pogen]

Thanks Haggers -- I sent you a PM over on S/A, I'd like to copy your story above to our Log on the main site -- http://sfbaysss.org/main/log/

Thanks

David

 

[Travieso]

Well done, congrats!

 

[Travieso]

Many thanks to everyone manning the RC deck. If it is any consolation you didn't have to spend hours going through the finishes video

Here is the unremarkable day onboard JetStream:

The No Bridge Fiasco
It was supposed to be the Three Bridge Fiasco. Rob is rejoining the doublehanded crew on JetStream. We had a very frustrating day. We knew this was going to be a race to finish in time and not necessarily to beat any particular boat. The whole day started wrong. Our racing day routine got broken up and we should have known these would be bad signs of things to come. I was running a bit late, and Rob had an early encounter with the law. We missed our breakfast window at Ole's and nothing good comes from that.

But we were encouraged by the early breeze. We tied up to GGYC before the race to get sorted out. I went upstairs for a quick look and already saw boats struggling sail against the ebb and it wasn’t even max ebb yet. We had a strategy in place, try to reach TI quickly to minimize our fight against the ebb. We would try to round TI clockwise as with the Easterly there was a nasty whole in the SW corner of TI which would make it impossible to round counterclockwise with the ebb. Take a little flush from the south bay with the left over ebb, get to RR on the current relief of the Berkeley flats and try to get to Blackaller with the late Westerly hopefully before the full flood started.

Well, needless to say that plan went down the drain pretty quickly, as most 3BF plans tend to do. We felt pretty good in our decision to hit TI first as we were in good company short tacking up the city front. We were making good progress and catching boats along Fort Mason and Aquatic Park. The light air machines Mumm30 and Azzura quickly caught up to us and passed us, but we were doing good against the rest of the fleet. After the Aquatic Park, Easom split left and Nelsen right along the shore. Starbuck also seemed to be doing well away from the city. We started getting diminishing returns short tacking in the easing breeze so we tried to find pressure further North. Well that didn’t work long. Soon the fickle breeze completely died and we started moving backwards. I’m happy to report that our anchor works fine in 55 feet of water. We had lunch and watched the non anchor boats drift towards the gate (Stephen how far did it take you?) and boats still shore tacking on the city front not really making any progress. There were two bunches, the crowd stuck at the Fisherman’s wharf breakwater and the crowd that made it to the Pier39 corner.

Some of the folks ahead of us were showing some Northerly breeze so we were hoping for it to fill from there. Meanwhile our friends on the Wiley 24 had pull the plug after trying to go straight to RR and getting flushed to the Marin headlands. They joined us for a quick beer and a bit of a raft up. A fickle Easterly began to fill in and we gave it another shot. It still looked pretty light on the Bay Bridge so we decided to head North and see if we could knock RR. Had a great sail under Code 0 from Alcatraz to Pt. Blunt. There we made the mistake of staying close to Angel thinking the flood would push us across. What flood? It was 3PM and we were still fighting the f’ing ebb. Set the kite and head east on the lightening westerly that was now filling the central bay. At these point we could see the boats that managed to get past TI, lead by Nelsen way inshore with a private westerly breeze. They were cooking on tight fetch from TI all the way to Richmond. We also saw the 1D35 with their red kite, already around RR and headed to TI. A bit after that we saw the Can also on the run from RR to TI.

By know it was already 4 PM, we had reached the Southampton shoals, but had yet still to round any of the marks. Wind was looking that exciting around RR, reports from retiring boats on the South Bay with a building flood didn’t look encouraging either, and even with solid conditions it would be a miracle for us to get around the course in 3 hours. We still had 2 hours to get home, so we called it a day. Had a nice reach back down to TI but right after the bridge it was glass. A J111 was working TI to get around, and I think I saw Synthia in the Hawkfarm unsuccessfully fighting the flood trying to go West. I was happy to be able to crank the engine on and power home.

A bit disappointing. I believe this is the first 3BF that I didn’t finish. Kudos to Dark and Stormy.