Richmond Yacht Club’s Junior Program was cancelled on Sunday, but John Dukat reports that Del Olsen took his new 55 kg (about 114 lbs.) International Canoe out for her maiden voyage. “Del says that the sail went well,” reports John, “But that there’s some tuning he needs to do. He built this boat in 90 days over at Eric Chase’s shop in Novato. Way too much carbon fiber, matter of fact, I think it’s all carbon fiber. They built the mast there as well. The Canoe’s dolly contains a piece from Steve Fossett’s submarine.” A few other RYC sailors ventured out for a sail on sunny Sunday as well.

All racing on San Francisco Bay was cancelled this weekend due to the spill of 58,000 gallons of bunker fuel from the Chinese container ship Cosco Busan, which ran into the Bay Bridge on Wednesday morning. Many yacht clubs and marinas were boomed off by strings of oil-absorbing pads. Berkeley Yacht Club was the first to cancel racing, as their race course was immediately and badly fouled. The Appleton NorCal high school regatta to be held at San Francisco YC Saturday was postponed. Island and Alameda Yacht Clubs had their first joint Estuary Midwinters scheduled on Sunday; race organizer Joanne McFee told us that “The Estuary is pretty clean, but nobody can get in from the outside.” The Coast Guard did request that Bay boats stay in their slips to avoid “disturbing” the oil.

On Saturday, of course it was pouring rain and very foggy, but despite the fuel spill and bad weather, Coyote Point YC’s Commodore Cup in San Mateo got as far as the starting line before giving up. Our sources tell us there just wasn’t any wind, although when some breeze did fill in later, a few folks went sailing. Corinthian YC’s Corinthian Challenge (formerly their Commodore’s Cup) had been scheduled for the same day, and was cancelled, as the downtown Tiburon/Belvedere Cove area got quite a bit of goo and sheen.

Signs, signs, everywhere are signs. The small print on the sawhorse along the Tiburon bike path reads, “People and pets stay out of the water.” Apparently no one had told the flock of coots in the background. ©2007 www.norcalsailing.com

Rain? What rain? At least someone got out in a boat on Saturday. ©2007 www.norcalsailing.com

Angel Island and most beaches in the Bay, San Francisco (except Ocean Beach), and Marin were closed all weekend. Angel Island has reopened, but all the beaches are still closed. You can keep track of Angel Island access at www.angelislandferry.com. News updates from the Coast Guard are available at www.uscg.mil/D11. For a provocative view of the incident that caused all this, see www.boatingsf.com/busan.php. It’s truly amazing. Today the Coast Guard told the news media that the surface of the water in the Bay is mostly cleaned up, and they’ll be redirecting the bulk of their efforts to shoreline clean-up in the next day or two.