Sailing Education Adventures

California Coastal Cleanup Day is the premier volunteer event focused on the marine environment in the country. In 2008, more than 70,000 volunteers worked together to collect more than 1,600,000 pounds of trash and recyclables from our beaches, lakes, and waterways. California Coastal Cleanup Day has been hailed by the Guinness Book of World Records as "the largest garbage collection" (1993). Website

On Thursday June 18, ten SEA members met at Fort Mason's Building C.

We discussed progress on items brought up at our last meeting, including excellent progress made on getting new dock space and getting all our boats back on the water.

We also brainstormed ways to inspire more member involvement, and to make SEA more visible.  The meeting lasted about 2 hours and produced a lot of helpful suggestions, after which a sub-committee reconvened at La Barca to celebrate member John Paul Watts' re-birthday!

Wednesday - San Francisco's "June Gloom" was really getting me down. I looked out my window at the soupy gray, and found it hard to believe the forecast of afternoon clearing. Still, I got to thinking it was about time I paid an evening visit to Richardson's Bay to check out SEA's new dock space.

I called up Andy, SEA's program director, to let him know I'd be joining the evening's open sail.

On Sunday, April 19, a group of SEA members who own their own boats decided to rendezvous for an out the gate adventure.  They sent back this report:

At 0930, Windseeker (Tartan 42), Grace O'Malley (Ranger 23), Kelly Shawn (Santana 22) and Summer Solstice (Tartan 34) rendezvous'd under Golden Gate Bridge and sailed for Stinson Beach. Yes, a little nip in the air but clear, sunny skies, light winds - a beautiful day, one of the best some of us have experienced in 5 years of sailing out the gate though the wind could've had a bit more ooomph to it (there's a maritime phrase for you!). The seas were mild as soon as we were away from the Potato Patch swells - we all know how frantic and threatening the swells can be as they pile over this, the north bar. So kind was the Potato Patch this day, some of us sailed across it.