New Facility at Jack London Square

So, for you loyal blog followers, we have a bit of a sneak preview on two very exciting developments here at J World… First off, we will be offering classes from a THIRD San Francisco Bay Area sailing school location in the next month. Ok, it’s really more of an extension of our Alameda facility, but we are thrilled that we will be offering courses from the famous Jack London Square at the Oakland waterfront!

This hotel is front-and-center amidst the restaurants, shops, coffee houses, bookstores, and nightclubs… not to mention the great marina. The Waterfront Plaza has just undergone a complete renovation, and is offering great room rates to all our students. We are excited to offer this new location to increase the sailing opportunities for our clients!

So that’s one bit of news… and for the other bit, I am going to make you wait a couple of days… but you are going to like this one too!

In the meantime, we are getting ready for our cruise down to Mexico. We still have berths available on our J 120, with four legs to choose from. If you have ever dreamed of cruising south, now is your chance… a real education-vacation! Sail with us from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, or from Santa Barbara to San Diego… or, head for Mexico with us! More info on our cruise to Mexico is here…

BBS Hot Shots…

Thanks to Ann for bringing to our attention a bunch of great photos from the 2008 Rolex Big Boat Series… Here’s a great one of Kevin on the bow and Paul at the mast ready for the hoist…


It’s a Peter Lyons shot, and he’s got a ton of great ones on his site. He really does a fantastic job… check out the sequence of the final run to the finish (including the luffing scenario I described in the last post) starting here. And do yourself a favor and hit his site at http://lyonsimaging.com/ for the full range of what he does. We are really fortunate to have him bouncing around the Bay with such regularity… not only does he have a great eye, but the guy seems to be EVERYWHERE, all the time! Thanks for the shots, Peter!

There is also a BBS video posted on You Tube…. a couple of shots (again, the J/120 run to final finish, and Chance winning the series by a sprit!)

2008 Rolex Big Boat Series

Ok… the spray has settled and the wounds are healing. The muscles are not screaming anymore and the boats are rinsed off and back in their stables. Congratulations to all the winners – and all the competitors – in the 2008 Rolex Big Boat Series in San Francisco.

There were over 100 boats competing on the Bay last week, and J World was well represented. Congrats to Travis, who was aboard the winning boat in IRC Division C, Eugenie who was coaching the J/145 Raincloud to a fourth place overall in IRC Division B. Yours truly was skippering J World, our trusty J/120 to a third place in our class. I was lucky enough to have a great team that dragged me around the course and made things happen smoothly: from the left, Kevin, Ann, Rebeca, Taylor, Jeff, Chris, Andy, Paul, Adam, Patti, and Wayne… thank you for making this a great event.

And thank you to the local J/120 Fleet… I have said repeatedly what a fantastic group this is. There is an absolutely unparalleled amount of camaraderie, healthy competition, and mutual respect with this group of sailors that presents such a refreshing change from the scenes and fleets that can devolve into petty and trivial squabbles. For example, the morning of the first race, one of the top competitors in the J/120 fleet (and a favorite to win the event) realized that in the chaos of getting ready, they had left their big class kite at home, with no chance of getting it before the start of Race 1. Two phone calls later, that team had two replacement sails to use from their competitors. Pretty cool. The group is incredibly welcoming to new fleet members… so if you are interested in checking out the group as either a potential skipper or a crew, I HIGHLY recommend it!
And on the water, the racing is tight, and I mean *tight*! After something like four consecutive wins, Mr. Magoo was finally beaten by a great showing from Barry Lewis and his team on Chance. But it didn’t come easy. Almost didn’t come at all. It was decided on the last leg of the last race of the series, during one of the most fun days of sailing I have had in a long time… let me tell you a story…
So Magoo is winning the series, with Chance in second. To win, Chance would have to beat Magoo and put a boat between them in the last race. Well, for much of the race, we were that boat. Chance got out to an early lead, and we were able to sneak into second, but Magoo charged hard and pulled into third… and so it went with Chance holding us back, but not so far back that Magoo would get by, while Magoo slugged away at us.
When our backstay ram got an air bubble in it and we started the last beat with no rig on, we got passed by Magoo and Grace Dances… bad news for Chance. And so at the final half of the final beat, we had a four way tacking duel…. we would tack, Grace would tack on us, Magoo would tack to keep Grace back, and Chance would tack to squash Magoo (remember, they had to push Magoo to third while keeping the lead).
We managed to get by Grace, and we all rounded the final weather mark hot on each others heals, Chance, Magoo, J World, Grace…. kites went up, and Chance made the big move…. wind check! Up hard came four J120s, kites luffing, all boats overlapped… but Magoo worked a bit forward on us, and suddenly we had a lane down. We bore away sharply, Taylor and Chris whaled on the spin sheet so the kite filled in a snap, and we were off towards the finish. Chance saw us break for it, and spun down, with Magoo and Grace right behind. We drag-raced Chance all the way to the finish… in some photos, we look launched, and I think we had them for a bit, but they got a bit more current relief and a sweet puff to take us at the line by a couple of feet, winning the race, and winning the regatta…

Anyway, that was really fun stuff. And look at what a fine day for sailing it was. This place is phenomenal. Great sailing by all parties… and congratulations to Barry and the whole Chance team…

Students sharing photos…

A recent graduate was good enough to post a bunch of pictues from his recent Learn-to-Sail class on San Francisco Bay… check them out here…. Thanks Roland!

Racing, and Cruising… and more Racing, more Cruising

Well, no sooner has our trusty J/120 returned back from the 2008 Pacific Cup race to Hawaii and our offshore cruise back to California, than we are launching into another epic Race/Cruise combo! The mighty vessel J/World is in the yard right now getting all new standing rigging, and then she’s off to the races in the 2008 Rolex Big Boat Series.

Right after this grand-prix event wraps up, all the comfort items get loaded aboard again and she goes into ‘cruising mode’ for the J World Annual Cruise to Mexico! This series of coastal/offshore cruising courses begins in mid October, and is one of our very favorite things we do. Each of the legs is a truly special adventure, and we even join in the world famous cruiser’s rally from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas… that’s right, you too can join the 2008 Baja-Ha-Ha!

If you haven’t seen it, here is the report from last years’ cruise south. It was an absolute blast, and this year promises to be just as great. Click here for more info…

We’ll keep you posted on how the racing goes… we have a ton of work to get done before the event starts… we hadn’t planned on pulling the rig before the regatta, but the unfortumate timing of the broken intermediate shroud (see below) has forced our hand. In the fiercely competitive J/120 class, this gear failure has cut into any practice time we had hoped to have which will likely cost us down the line, but we have a fabulous team and I’m sure we’ll rise to the occasion! And a huge thank you goes out to my long time buddy Chris at Svendsen’s for working to get the boat back together quickly…

Eugenie, rested after the offshore trip from Oahu to SF, has been out practicing with the J/145 Raincloud in preparation for the Big Boat Series. Barry and Josh will both be aboard the IMX 38 Hawkeye, while Travis will be slugging it out aboard the J/122 TKO. Yours truly will be on our trusty J World, so we’ll try to post a lot of updates as we go along…