Retired from tech industry here in the heart of Silicon Valley.  Long career with start up companies and building teams. Racing sailboats since the 90’s. Learned to sail here on SF Bay.  “if you can sail here, you can sail anywhere”  

Addicted to racing.  Love one design, around the buoy type racing.

Originally from Kansas City… moved here for tech jobs and never looked back. When I moved here, I had been a rock climber/mountaineer for many years… all over the Rockies and west coast with a couple trips to Nepal. Here for a few years and my climbing partner got distracted by Law school so I did a lot of solo trips.

35 years ago, when he graduated from Law school, I thought ” Great!  Got my partner back!”  but he went out and bought a sailboat. I was bummed.

He needed rail meat for a race out of Coyote Point so I showed up knowing nothing… in my normal climbing clothes (nylon running shorts and a t-shirt). SF Bay handed me a very cold lesson. But, sailing is an engineer’s conundrum… how does this work?

I learned to sail racing that little Cal 25 that was falling apart on SF Bay in high winds.  

“In the early 90’s I bought a J/35 which I campaigned out of South Beach harbor and joined South Beach Yacht Club.

I learned to sail racing that little boat that was falling apart on SF Bay in high winds.  

Then life and startups got in the way… sold the J/35 but sailed on Other People’s Boats. In general OPB is much more accessible.  I joined a crew on a J/120 where we sailed for 10 years and developed a very tight team… the owner sold that and bought a J/111 which we sailed for another 9 or so years. Then the owner downsized to a Knarr (Norwegian classic looking boat about 30 feet long)

In 2019 I came home from Rolex Big Boat Series after a windy race week on the J/111.  My wife says: “You gotta get an easier job on the boat… this one requires younger people?”  I said “I already had the easy job”… she said “you need to drive the boat! ” I said “whose boat?”  She said “Get your own.”

So, in January of 2020 I bought a J/88.  2020 was a rough sailing year but when the world started to turn back on, the one design fleets started racing again. The J/88 fleet in the bay area is 10 boats including the two new boats that showed up last year.  We sail all the One Design regattas pretty much matching the huge J/105 Fleet here in the bay… there are probably 35-40 J/105s here.

The J Stop Regatta hosted by SBYC annually just happened this last weekend. Fun racing, ~ 30 boats… unusually light wind for June with a huge cross current. Fantastic strategic and tactical maneuver challenges (one event for us was when we passed “Split Water” on the reach and ended up about 1ft from them running up our butts!).

At this point, I have a great team… a couple who have sailed with me for 20 odd years… but more fun than that are all the women who are getting integrated into the team. My main competitive team is 3 women and 4 men. My Friday Night Series team is generally 2 men and 5-6 women.  I am training up the women for the annual SBYC Red Bra Regatta in September.  Last year’s team won their division on my J/88… “Butcher”.

So… J/boats racing is fantastic, competitive and occasionally brutal in San Francisco Bay winds. It is easy to get addicted to.