Featured Stories on Boating and Boater Safety

Watch your wake

The Coast Guard has consistently listed boat wakes among the top 10 primary contributing factors for boating accidents in the United States in its annual Recreational Boating Statistics report. It's been determined that the number of boating accidents and personal injuries attributed to boat wakes during the last four years is an average of 193 people hurt each year because of the force of a boat’s wake and that an average of 211 accidents were caused by the force of a wake.

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Safety rules could change in wake of race accident

Five of the eight sailors aboard Low Speed Chase died after the Sydney 38 rolled in breaking surf during the Full Crew Farallones Race. As a stunned San Francisco sailing community mourned the loss of five of its own, fact-finding continued into how and why the 38-footer Low Speed Chase rolled in breaking seas while rounding Southeast Farallon Island for the 28-mile return to San Francisco’s bayside city front — start and finish of the Full Crew Farallones Race.

He knows what seas are like at the islands

Russell Bradley, a biologist who spends weeks at a time on the Farallon Islands, says seas can build to more than 20 feet.

Russell Bradley has spent more than 1,400 nights on Southeast Farallon Island, so he knows just how rough the seas are out there and how unpredictable the waves can be.

“It depends on the day,” says Bradley, a 36-year-old biologist, who for 10 years has been spending six weeks at a time on the island to observe the bird and sea life.

Sailors may have crashed into cliffs

If the Spot Google track is correct, it appears the four sailors who died struck North Coronado Island. Already shaken by the deaths of five sailors in a race to San Francisco’s Farallon Islands, California’s sailing community suffered another blow and yet more agonizing self-examination two weeks later as all four crewmembers on the Hunter 376 Aegean perished in a Newport-to-Ensenada Race accident that left the boat in pieces.

US Sailing panels examine the accidents

US Sailing appointed a nine-member independent panel to review the loss of five sailors in the 2012 Full Crew Farallones Race in which the Sydney 38 Low Speed Chase rolled in breaking waves off Southeast Farallon Island.

US Sailing president Gary Jobson, in a May 1 conference call, spoke with the media and Coast Guard about the review and a suspension of offshore racing in San Francisco until the review is completed.

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