The Round Treasure Island Regatta is one of my favorites. The event has been going on for nearly 50 years! Participants gather at the Encinal Launch ramp in Alameda, CA for a day of buoy racing on Saturday and the main event, a distance race around Treasure Island in the San Francisco bay. The route takes racers under the Bay Bridge in a clockwise direction. Typically there is a long beat up to the bridge from the south bay, with an exciting reach and gybe in “the slot” an area between Treasure Island and Alcatraz that has some of the most regular high wind and exciting sailing conditions in the world. Racers carefully complete the high wind gybe and then sail into the lee of Treasure island, there is typically very flat water and gusty conditions as they approach the next section of the Bay Bridge, which ultimately leads to a screaming reach to the finish line. There can be a hole on the weather side or leeward side of the island that sailors need to navigate due to the geography of the region. The course even has its own special course flag.
This event this year was scheduled for Saturday and Sunday on 4th of July weekend. With the cooperation of Kame Richards of Pineapple Sails, the Alameda Community Sailing Center and the Parks and Recreation department of the City of Alameda, we have a clean parking a launch facility near the old Navy Base on Alameda, with evening parking for boats and vehicles and quick access to the flat and breezy south bay. When the event was scheduled, we were still in the uncertain times pre-vaccine and complete lockdowns. The week of the event looked to have plenty of opportunity for classic social but we hadn’t been prepared for that. A fortunate series of events and club connections led to a Friday social hour and the newly remodeled Ballena Bay Yacht club nearby and a fantastic Saturday Night BBQ dinner! Our reliable chase boat operator Lowell Ellis came out again with his amazing Chili, cornbread and all the fixings. The Ballena Bay Yacht Club hosted us, and we shared Chili, and they shared their regular Fri Social food and drink with us.
Saturday of the event, competitors came out and and so did breeze. H16s were trapped, and H20s were double trapped the whole day, with moderate to light chop and some quick racing. Our PRO, Mike Little fired off some quick racing with 5 races for the H16 A fleet and 6 Races for the H20 fleet!
There was a bit of a lull in the middle of the day, but plenty of breeze for the racing. As we wrapped up and headed in the wind continued to build. The H16 skipper leading the day figured he hadn’t had enough breeze and proceeded to head back out on his wing foil for a little while. We all got cleaned up and headed into the Yacht club for a few hours of great food, drink and music.
For this event we typically schedule an early start, it’s easy to postpone for no breeze, but if it’s blowing, it’s hard to get people out earlier to avoid the blow out! Sunday had a forecast for moderate to exciting breeze for most of the day. We got on the water and assembled by about 11:30. (Race Committee was ready by about 10:50) We had a 10 minute gap between the H16s and the 20s to try and make sure the boats were rounding the island at a similar time and finishing together. It worked out beautifully, with all boats finishing within 5-10 minutes of each other!
We also got a wonderful flyover since our Sunday Event was also the 4th of July!
Good Breeze, good times, and good friends! Hope to see you out there next year!
