Wednesday, August 22, 2007
TUESDAY 21 AUGUST O7-- EXCITING SKIFF RACES
Tuesday was another sunny and warm day in San Francisco. John Chan, a friend from the LA area, drove up that morning and joined us for an afternoon outing.
While hiking past Crissy Field on Monday, we saw a collection of skiffs sitting on the grass just west of the St. Francis Yacht Club and found out later that the 5 days of skiff racing would begin on Tuesday. So we were hoping to see some of the racing as we left port around 1 pm.
As we headed out into the central bay, this lovely center-cockpit ketch passed, heading east.
We began beating westward against the very light flood current, and eventually passed ADVENTURE CAT 2 heading back toward home port.
Ahead of us, we could see the skiffs scampering across the bay waters and we were about a quarter mile east of them when the second race of the day started.
We watched from a distance as the skiffs beat upwind to the windward mark, and soon thereafter, they were flying downwind under spinnaker, most of the hull out of the water, like this one.....
... and even more so, the PEGASUS RACING skiff-- one of the boats in the racing syndicate owned by Phillipe Kahn, the founder of Borland Software and, along with his teenage son, nicknamed Shark, an avid racer.
Here come another two skiffs blasting downwind past us.
After a short inteval PEGASUS RACING passed us, now in the lead by several boat lengths.
Next came Delonghi.
In third place was YANROO, and you can see clearly hwo they are hiked out the pole which is mounted six feet or more from the edge of the hull.
A few minutes later, we saw PEGASUS RACING blasting downwind again....
... followed by the second and third place boats.
To the west, nearer the windward mark, we had watched as the West Marine skiff flipped three times in a row, and now were were passing the SKIFFSAILING.COM skiff, which was taking many minutes to turn rightside up again, while the TMF skiff blasted past.
Finally they were managing to right the skiff as we passed.
We then began beating toward the gate encountering consistently freshening winds until the wind was blowing over 25 knots by the gate, and this sailboat behind us was seriously overcanvassed and flogging the main mercilessly!
A lone windsurfer with a small sail was enjoying the hellacious winds, but we decided not to try to shoot the gate under those conditions and instead headed back downwind toward home port, enjoying a peaceful broad reach all the way home.
Here is a composite of several of the video clips that we took of the skiff racing
for your viewing pleasure.
We really enjoyed wathing this exciting racing, and hope this video clip gives you a little sense of what it's like to be out there with these fast racing machines.
Tuesday was another sunny and warm day in San Francisco. John Chan, a friend from the LA area, drove up that morning and joined us for an afternoon outing.
While hiking past Crissy Field on Monday, we saw a collection of skiffs sitting on the grass just west of the St. Francis Yacht Club and found out later that the 5 days of skiff racing would begin on Tuesday. So we were hoping to see some of the racing as we left port around 1 pm.
As we headed out into the central bay, this lovely center-cockpit ketch passed, heading east.
We began beating westward against the very light flood current, and eventually passed ADVENTURE CAT 2 heading back toward home port.
Ahead of us, we could see the skiffs scampering across the bay waters and we were about a quarter mile east of them when the second race of the day started.
We watched from a distance as the skiffs beat upwind to the windward mark, and soon thereafter, they were flying downwind under spinnaker, most of the hull out of the water, like this one.....
... and even more so, the PEGASUS RACING skiff-- one of the boats in the racing syndicate owned by Phillipe Kahn, the founder of Borland Software and, along with his teenage son, nicknamed Shark, an avid racer.
Here come another two skiffs blasting downwind past us.
After a short inteval PEGASUS RACING passed us, now in the lead by several boat lengths.
Next came Delonghi.
In third place was YANROO, and you can see clearly hwo they are hiked out the pole which is mounted six feet or more from the edge of the hull.
A few minutes later, we saw PEGASUS RACING blasting downwind again....
... followed by the second and third place boats.
To the west, nearer the windward mark, we had watched as the West Marine skiff flipped three times in a row, and now were were passing the SKIFFSAILING.COM skiff, which was taking many minutes to turn rightside up again, while the TMF skiff blasted past.
Finally they were managing to right the skiff as we passed.
We then began beating toward the gate encountering consistently freshening winds until the wind was blowing over 25 knots by the gate, and this sailboat behind us was seriously overcanvassed and flogging the main mercilessly!
A lone windsurfer with a small sail was enjoying the hellacious winds, but we decided not to try to shoot the gate under those conditions and instead headed back downwind toward home port, enjoying a peaceful broad reach all the way home.
Here is a composite of several of the video clips that we took of the skiff racing
for your viewing pleasure.
We really enjoyed wathing this exciting racing, and hope this video clip gives you a little sense of what it's like to be out there with these fast racing machines.
# posted by charlie bergstedt @ 3:31 PM 
