Bayview's Monday Madness

I was also invited to the Bayview Yacht!!! Sorry Boating Club"s Monday Madness. Over the weekend, every time I mentioned the club's name, I would get, from those who knew the club, laughs and giggles and often a story associated with their annual "Plastic Classic" regatta(thanks Max). Something about overly enthusiastic female spectators at the weather mark trying to distract the participants and apparently succeeding!! I thought to myself "why would they want to invite a brand new, asso strutting, sport boat to a club that prides itself in the promotion of "older is better!!"

For the race I needed crew that knew how to get to the club from Berkeley Marina and the body of water that we were going to sail in. Once again we went to Sailing Anarchy for help and got a quick reply from Max. I then called Tim, an OCSC instructor that had Monday off and he was keen! They were both available for a little practice time before the race. After a couple of tacks and some nice screaming broad reaches it was time for the trip to Bayview.

For those of you not familiar with the bay area and love bridges, this is the place for you!! We had to go under two bridges to get to Bayview. One was the old "S.F- Oakland Bay" bridge and the new "hugely over budget and highly controversial" bridge. Thank goodness Max came with us because the club was "shoe horned" between a couple rusted, out of service, old military ships and hidden behind a pier. We sailed in, docked and I went up to register for the race.

What I found was one of the friendliest, funky looking clubs I had ever seen. I had to do a double take!! It was as if I just walked into an old "raw" bar in Key West. There I was standing in the middle of the bar, with my fashionable Helly Hansen inshore, baby blue, breathable state of the art sailing gear and rap-around RayBan sunglasses. There was a sudden hush, like the one you would see on a spaghetti western when the bad guy walks in. Looking back at me were a dozen or so Gerry Garcia and Jimmy Buffet look alikes. I didn't know that pony tails were in fashion!! Boy did I feel out of place!! I mumbled something about a race and was directed to the patio and the race committee. I registered and went back to the boat.

The race, for us, was rather anti climatic. We started on a fairly tight broad reach and as the gusts shot out between the warehouses along the waterfront we would franticly try and bare off. On the third broach we broke our lower pintle and after a successful "fireman's drill" we sat there like a cork and watched the fleet of "classic" boats sail by.

Funny enough, the first thing that came to mind was that I wouldn't be able to get back to the Bayview Boat Club and tip back a few and spend some quality time with the locals. The next time I'm back in the Bay area I want to find out why they call it "Monday Madness"!!