Sometimes the weather is not so summery on Memorial Day Weekend, the unofficial beginning of the summer season. Case in point: this year’s Master Mariners Regatta was held under cold, foggy skies that never cleared or warmed, even in the Oakland Estuary. But it didn’t rain like last year, and the wind was good - from the west or southwest depending on which part of the course you were on, and not the blasts of 35 knots that were predicted, but enough to get a lot of heavy wooden boats around the Cityfront, the Central Bay, and Southampton Shoals to a finish in the lee of Treasure Island, just north of the Bay Bridge.

The start is a reach, between the Golden Gate YC’s starting buoy X, and the St. Francis YC’s starting buoy (currently a temporary), with Little Harding the first mark.

Four different courses are devised for the very different groups of boats. Not everything goes to weather like a modern Marconi-rigged sloop. For instance, all have a weather mark (Blackaller Buoy off Crissy Field), except the Big Schooners and Gaff 1 and 2, which really can’t point at all. They go to Yellow Bluff instead. Additionally, the Big Schooners (Alma, Lynx and Seaward) have a 15-minute motoring allowance. Alma used every minute of hers. Her captain, Park Ranger Jason Rucker, cranked up the engine to get from Little Harding to Yellow Bluff against a westerly, and again during the long one-tack beat from Southampton Shoals to the finish against a southwesterly. Even so, Alma could barely lay the finish.

“This was my first year driving,” said Jason, who sailed competitively despite saying they were not competitive. “It's not a race boat. It's all up to the conditions. If the conditions are just right, Alma can excel, If not she just can't. One year it all came together and Al Lutz and the crew won it.” That was 2001. This year, Alma finished second after Seaward, ahead of Lynx, last year’s winner. Each Big Schooner did a horizon job on the one behind it.

A division that did compete as any typical one design class would was the Bears. A 23-ft Nunes Brothers design from Sausalito, built in the 1930s through 1976, the Bears came out of hibernation this year, with eight boats on the line, as noisy and competitive as a J/105 start. One even got pushed over early and had to go back to restart. Magic won their division.

Peter Miller of Kodiak commented that “It's been hard to keep the fleet together, which is really sad because they are great boats to sail. And they have a great San Francisco history.”

Robert Briscoe, the former owner of Huck Finn, raced in the heyday of the Bears in the 1970s. “I couldn't take the Cityfront bashing anymore, but it proved the boats are sturdy. I think the future of the fleet is to support more cruising and a more relaxed racing schedule. These boats are very tough; they have been taking a beating for many years now. The Master Mariners has helped keep the Bear fleet active. We’ve stayed with the Master Mariners for many years now, and that will help with a reborn class.”

By contrast, the Birds have flown the coop. Only three signed up, and just two, Robin and Curlew, made it to the race. The 30-ft Birds were also developed in Sausalito in the post-WWI era as a racing class, and were built by the Madden & Lewis Shipyard to a design originated by Fred Brewer and modified by John Alden. A healthy flock of 11 Birds continues to race in WBRA.

We were privileged to sail aboard Alma. The 80-ft scow schooner was built in San Francisco in 1891 to haul hay, straw, salt, bricks, and eggs (no fruit, as it would rot) from the Delta (as far upriver as Sacramento) and Petaluma to the growing, hungry City. “In the 1930s, the highways and bridges made the scow schooners obsolete,” explained Carol Nobs, a docent. “Alma became a dredger, collecting oyster shells, which were ground up and added to chicken feed to harden the eggshells. Alma is a sister to the City of Petaluma and returns once a year during Butter & Egg Days.”

By mid-century Alma had fallen on hard times. “In 1954 she was found in Alviso on the mudflats,” said Carol. “The owner sold her to the California State Parks, but they didn’t have the funds to restore her, so a couple of years later they sold her to the National Parks system. She is the only floating National Park.” Major repairs left only 10% of the original craft remaining, “but she was rebuilt to look like the original based on pictures and schematics.”

The lines aboard Alma all look like manila rope, but they are actually a synthetic called Roblon, which doesn’t stretch or rot, and the sails look like cotton canvas but are made from recycled plastic bottles.

You can read more on Alma at www.nps.gov/safr/historyculture/alma.htm. Many thanks to Captain Jason Rucker and First Mate Alice Watts for having us onboard Alma and to all the crew who put up with us.

See our photo gallery for many, many more photos of the regatta.

Complete results of the Master Mariners Regatta are now available at www.mastermariners.org. The next big event for the MMBA is the Wooden Boat Show at Corinthian YC in downtown Tiburon on June 28.