Actually, this is called the Three Bridge Fiasco, aka TBF. See last year's post. It's called the 'Fiasco' since you can chose the order of rounding marks at your leisure, including in which direction to pass the start/finish line. On top of that, this is the most popular race in SF Bay for the whole year, with 350+ boats on the starting line. One caveat, you cannot have a full crew, max is 2 people on board. So, maneuvering in tight quarters with plenty of boats is quite a challenge. The race is a pursuit race, that means each boat has an individual starting time, based on handicap. Slow boats start first, and theoretically everybody should arrive at the finish line around the same time. Chaos pure!
SO this year, totally different conditions, compared to last year! A raging noon ebb tide paired with low winds made things really difficult. With Constance being slow in little wind, we opted to go with the current and start downwind, finishing the race course clockwise. I positioned ourselves upwind/upcurrent of the line with 5 minutes to go and started setting the spinnaker. Everything went fine while Jewel was steering towards the line. THEN I realized that EVERYBODY else was starting upwind, meaning in opposite direction as we were. Luckily we were on starboard tack and most boats just stayed out of the way, but for a moment I was truly scared looking at the fleet coming towards us. To give you an impression: Time lapse of the starting line here:
After we got without incident through the starting line (only 30sec past our starting time!), things went pretty well and we passed a bunch of boats on the way to the first mark. Spinnaker takedown was equally successful and we rounded the mark tightly, heading hard up into the wind to cross the shipping channel towards Raccoon strait. That's when I realized that boats in front of us got swept out of the Golden Gate by the ebb current. Checking the GPS track showed clearly that this was our fate too, so I tacked back to get upstream somewhat. Meanwhile we were in the maximum ebb current and could barely hold our position, just moving sideways over ground while going 5kn through the water.
Then the wind died. And like the rest of the fleet that had opted for this direction, we got brutally sucked out of the Golden Gate. While spinning the boat in the current eddies, a big gigantic cargo freighter appeared from the ocean and tried to work his way through hundreds of sail boats drifting slowly with the tides. TOOOOOOT!!!! At that time we were in the middle of the channel, but luckily I was able to spin the boat around and point in the right direction. The 4kn of current speed gave us enough wind into the sails so that we could inch out of the channel before the biggie was there. Some other boats had to fire up the engine and had to abandon the race therefore.
Now came the biggest challenge, getting back into the SF Bay against all that current. There is a strong countercurrent heading east at the northern shore, so that's where we went. And miraculously we made it back under the bridge, until we almost were able to tack over into horseshoe cove out of the current. Almost! Just like 30 other boats we ended up in one big gigantic eddie swirling just West of the bridge. Once you cleared that little headland, a strong side current would sweep you easily back into the Pacific Ocean. We tried 9 times (!) to clear that headland without success. That's why we call this race the 9BF :-). After 3 hours of this no end was in sight and out of 21 miles race distance we had done maybe 2 miles. No way we could finish the race and we opted to abandon the race instead to go swimming at Aquatic Park anchorage!
Out of 357 boats on the start line, only 1 boat finished (!), about 9 minutes before the deadline at 7pm. Another catamaran apparently finished too but didn't have running lights so got disqualified. Bummer! Anyways, was lots of fun, totally sore the next day from numerous tacks and even more close encounters with other boat in the tidal swirl off the North Tower of Golden Gate! Next year we'll be back...
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| Motor-sailing towards SF |
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| Beautiful sunset |
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| 3BF starting line |
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| 30 boats stuck under the Golden Gate |
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| Captain got a sunburn.. |
