The Bougie Side of Bay Area Sailing
Golden Gate bridge from Marin County
Over the July 4th long weekend just for kicks I decided to go for a drive and check out the San Francisco Yacht Club and also the Corinthian Yacht Club up in Marin County. So, fairly early on July 4th I head out. First order of business was to find a good place for breakfast. I know one great breakfast spot (Apple Fritter in San Mateo) and head there but unfortunately it is closed for the 4th. A bit of a search leads to me to another likely option called Bay watch in San Mateo. It has all the looks of a good breakfast place so in I go. Had a good but not great breakfast there.
After breakfast, I head up to Marin County which means I am heading over the Golden Gate bridge. Since I am in no hurry I decided to stop on the South side of the bridge to get out and walk across the bridge since it was reasonably clear, I had time and it seems like an iconic San Francisco thing to do. After circling the parking lot for what seemed like hours (more like about 5 minutes) I found a spot, figured out how to pay for it using some website, refusing to download an app, refusing to make an account and finally just paying for the parking spot only to discover a parking machine nearby, I headed out to walk across the bridge. It is about 1.75 miles to the parking lot on the other side and I walked there took a picture and walked back. While it is an iconic walk it was not a pleasant or enjoyable walk. Yes, the views are good but as you are walking on a bridge with 6 lanes of traffic zipping by it was kind of just annoying. Checked that off my list of things to do.
Next stop San Francisco Yacht Club in Belvedere. Belvedere turns out to be fancy little enclave in Tiburon which itself is already a fancy little town. I make my way to the yacht club and do a drive by. Nice place! I didn’t dare to park there as I felt very out of place amongst the private cabanas, golf carts zipping around with SFYC painted on them and elderly clearly wealthy people valet parking their Mercedes getting out wearing SFYC club jackets and ties. Would be nice but not really my place. Next stop was to head around the corner to the Corinthian Yacht Club. It took me a couple drive-bys to even figure out how to get there but I finally figured it out and drove in. I poked around and spoke to a couple people. They have a lift but the dry storage wait time is apparently even longer than at SFYC. The people at least seemed more like sailing people than yacht club people though. Neither places is a viable option but nice to check them out.
Since I was up in the North bay area I decided to head back via Richmond and go check out what will end up being the home of Bazinga (you will have to read the next post for details on that). I got home in the early afternoon and made a delicious pot roast for dinner. I wasn’t planning to go see any fireworks shows so just said home. Unbeknownst to me there was to be a fireworks show that I was able to watch from my living room window. At about 2045h, the fireworks started up in earnest and I could see them form my living room window apparently coming from just across the 101 freeway from where I live. It was quite a show and at 2230h was still going strong. It was quite impressive that there was a constant stream of fireworks for almost 2 hours that included a decent display.