Sailing the Bay

“Our most variable season is winter – not the calendar winter, but the months from November through February“

Kimball Livingston, Sailing the Bay, 1st edition
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(B)log . . .

None for this post
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(B)log comments

None for this post either
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My Blog . . .

I’m not holding hard and fast to the idea of having every post include a (B)log or (B)log comments entry.

Sailing requires many things. Flexibility is one of them. Now that I have my (B)log entries list set up in the sidebar, anyone who wants to navigate that entry list can do it easily. I need to pause a moment and address the TBF preparations.

The first preparation was to dust off my copy of Kimball Livingston’s work, Sailing the Bay

I used to have a copy of the 2nd edition, but alas, I loaned it to someone and forgot who (I do that a lot). But I still have my copy of the 1st edition, and now that I’m blogging about sailing the bay, I realize that I’ll need to guard that copy with my life. The 2nd edition? Last I checked (today) West Marine had one dog eared copy left. Email Me and I’ll tell you which store. It has my fingerprints on it.

The 1st edition is a treasure (and no, not the treasure referred to in my last post). I don’t think Kimball will mind if I quote from that book. I’ve been opening the book randomly for the last few weeks, and today I went to the front and was a little stunned to recall the foreword by Tom Blackaller.

To quote Tom:

“Without a doubt, San Francisco Bay is the most exciting place in the world to sail. The consistent velocity of the wind, the trickiness of the currents, the fickleness of the fog all combine to offer real challenges to any sailor. Kim Livingston attempts to solve these problems and to make sailing on the Bay more enjoyable for everybody by explaining why they happen and how they happen.”

It is no coincidence that one of the TBF marks is named after Tom.

This is a good place to start one’s preparations. Tom does not mention the fickleness of a winter season on the bay. Perhaps because if you pay attention to what Kim says in the section on the Bay’s winter season, you’ll recognize why and how that weather is what it is, when it is.

So my next step was to put a link on my Blog to the Surface Analysis page of the National Weather Service.

After tomorrows romp with the J105 group, we’ll be going over how to use surface analysis in conjunction with Kim’s thoughtful explanations and begin to answer the question:

“Which way to we go?”


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Special Thanks to CJ