3BF!

Time of the year again to venture out on the Bay for the Three Bridge Fiasco! This year we had beautiful sunshine and 360 boats on the line in one of the biggest sail boat races in the US. Unfortunately we also had a nice New Moon (Happy Chinese New Year!), which results in horrendous tidal currents. On top of that, the plentiful rain this winter results in quite some run-off, magnifying the ebb currents significantly. With that in mind I decided to round the Red Rock next to Richmond bridge first, before the flood current would run out around 11a. After that I expected that the fickle winds around Red Rock would have us stranded there fighting the ever increasing current.

The starting area. As usually manymany boats and little wind

Our starting time at 09:35:45 (this is a pursuit race) gave us just 1.5hrs to cover the 6 miles to the Rock, so straight there was the objective (in hindsight that was a mistake, but more of that later). The wind was blowing steady out of the NE at 5-10kn with some gusts up to 15kn. We made good progress and saw the rest of the fleet opting to fight the flood current and round Blackaller Buoy next to the Golden Gate first. Hmmm. At least that made us go first through Raccoon straight without having to cross-tack with many other boats. Rounded Red Rock around 11a, just as planned, with quite enough wind to make it just fine. Spinnaker went up, without twists and snags (!), and off we went to our next target, Treasure Island. 

Skipper still happy. Things are slowing down...

That's where it became interesting. The wind was forecasted to fill in behind the Berkeley hills only by 2p, and sure enough ahead of us was a big dead zone extending to the horizon. Some fast boats had already reached that line and were sitting there motionless. Eventually all boats around us got to that line and about 200 boats were sitting there becalmed. It was quite an amazing sight, the line was so abrupt that it was like a starting line to an Olympic race, except all sorts of different boats, spinnaker or no, big and large. Then the ebb current started setting in and I noticed we were drifting backwards at 1kn. Thankfully it is relatively shallow there and I could deploy our stealth anchor. A number of boats drifted backwards and there were some tense moments where collisions were almost imminent. The number of boats announcing withdrawal from the race attested to that. After 1 hr parking we started moving again, only to be parked again at the North End of Treasure Island.

Sailboat parking lot extending a mile to the right..

..and all the way to the Berkeley shore (it seems) to the left.

By now even the slowest boats that had opted to go around Blackaller first had caught up with us. So in hindsight we should have done that too. Oh well. Nothing that could be changed now, the next thing was to get around that blasted Treasure Island against a raging ebb current. I saw a bunch of boats solidly parked on the left (eastern) side of the channel where there was obviously no wind. The boats in the middle were struggling against the current whereas the boats next to the shore of TI seemed to be doing best. So that's where we went, even though I knew there were some risks to that too, like getting pinned downwind on port tack or running into some windless eddy under the bridge later.

Big Blue still flying..

Things went relatively smooth until we went under the Bay Bridge around 3p. That's where chaos unfolded, the raging current and boats abreast on different tacks was really difficult to handle. Plus in light winds our A-sail doesn't like to gybe, and gybe we did multiple times due to boats and other obstacles. Every time we had to gybe the spinnaker lines got tangled on the bow pulpit and we lost speed. My faithful crew was getting quite desperate in the tangle of lines on the front deck! I tried frantically to get to free air by gybing through the fleet onto the other side of the channel, but on port tack with so many boats around it was not possible. In the end I was just happy we got spit out off the back of fleet, not having collided with anybody. Some boats even collided with the Coast Guard cutter anchored on the SE corner of TI. The Coasties were not happy at all!

The next drama came when we went around the southern corner of TI. We ended up being somewhat too close to the island and got swept into an eddie at the Western shore. Some other boats got so close to land that they had to switch on the engine and bail out. Thankfully we got a puff of air just in time and were able to clear. Phew! By now it was 4p. But only riding the ebb current down to Blackaller and back 1mile to the finish! We set the spinnaker again and blazed down at 8-9kn with a nice beam reach between Alcatraz and the SF shore and the rest of the ebb current behind us. I opted to take down the spinnaker early to make sure no entanglement would prevent us from rounding and then risking getting flushed out of the Golden Gate. But approaching Blackaller we all of a sudden slowed down a lot and I realized that there was a very strong flood current, at least 4kn, around Blackaller! It took us 30min to get the last 200yards! after that it was taking back and forth to the finish line which took us another hour (since there was still an ebb current running everywhere else!). 18:04 was our finish time, 55min to spare, but not too many boats behind.

At that point I was totally exhausted, my left hand had started to cramp and became a rigid claw not being able to grab the steering wheel even! We dropped the anchor in nearby Aquatic Cove and went to bed after an early dinner, sleeping like logs. That night we said "never again", but I'm sure we'll be back next year ;-)