Bad Day at the Farallon's 

 SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The search for four yacht crew members thrown from their boat during a weekend race off Northern California was indefinitely suspended, with the Coast Guard saying the "window of survivability" had passed.

The four were part of an eight-member crew racing around the Farallon Islands Saturday when their sailboat was hit by powerful waves that forced it onto rocks.

The Farallon Race is a right of passage in the Bay Area. I have completed the race twice.  Once with a full crew. Once double handed. (Two sailors).  The islands lay 27 miles outside the Golden Gate Bridge.  Windswept and barren, it is a sanctuary for seabirds. Seals love the place and this brings numerous Great White Sharks.  There is a research station on one island. Access is via a hoist on calm days. There are no docks or beaches. The islands are off limits to simple folk. In a word, inhospitable.

A century-old tradition, the Full Crew Farallones Race has never been for the faint of heart: Winds averaging 10 to 20 knots and churning 14-foot Pacific Ocean swells are among the rough conditions typically braved by yachts and their crews during the daylong regatta, a spring favorite of skilled sailors.

So the race takes you around the islands. Generally, rounding to port is preferred.  (The Photo is taken looking from the north to the southeast)  The prevailing winds make the trip out a hard beat to weather.  Rounding the islands can be a handful with some heavy surging from the waves on the weather side. Currents and wave action can dramatically impact the path of your boat. 

R. David Britt, a University of California, Davis chemist who skippered his sailboat, Split Water, in the Full Crew Farallones Race for the third time on Saturday, described the sailing out by the islands that day as "pretty intense." Swells nearing 20-feet-high were breaking far enough from the craggy outcroppings that Britt says he steered farther around them than he otherwise might to avoid getting swamped by a wave or dashed onto the rocks.

The real game begins on the run back in.  Winds are generally strong and your spinnaker is drawing hard....if you dare fly one. It's a white knuckle run.  Your goal is to set up for the channel into San Francisco and avoid having to deal with the shoals on either side. It's not the depth per se, but, oh, those waves.  On the north side the Potato Patch can throw  some wicked surf up. To the south, more waves that drive you towards the beach. The channel itself is no cakewalk.  Many boats have trouble in this area. Several have wound up on the rocks of the Marin Headlands or on the Great Beach by the Cliff House. However, if you do it right with a good breeze, you get a 25 mile spinnaker run that you will talk about for years.  Do it wrong, and things break, or worse.


Clearly, things took a turn for the worse.  Details remain sketchy, but we have one dead, three rescued, and four missing, presumed dead. The Coast Guard has called off the search.  Truly a tragedy that will spread throughout the Bay Area sailing community. 

Our thoughts and prayers to all involved.

   

UPDATE:  More at SFGATE