st francis yacht club youth sailing

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Leading Yacht Clubs • Working Together • Sharing Experiences

Offering a bigger experience of sailing

Kimball Livingston

St. Francis Yacht Club

June 21, 2023

By Kimball Livingston, St. Francis Yacht Club

When Kimball Livingston was the 2016 Commodore of St. Francis Yacht Club he led an initiative that changed the focus of his club’s youth program. Now with the title of Staff Commodore Ambassador to Youth Sailing\, he offers this update.

I follow, fascinated, the stream of commentary in our sport’s media expressing pride, dismay, optimism/pessimism and, occasionally, disdain for the state of youth sailing in this moment when everything is happening at once. Gone are the days of advancing automatically from this little-kid boat to that big-kid boat. Kids are being diverted into the newest, fastest thing, including other, related watersports—wingfoiling has proven irresistible to the young and not so young at StFYC. It’s also proving to be more teachable and cost-effective than the kiting it is largely replacing, and we think it’s safer too.

After years of fretting that we couldn’t get teens kiting because of the windy, current-ridden waters in front of StFYC—and sending kids elsewhere to learn—we’re teaching the sport of foiling at last. First on a tow-behind. Then the kids get their wings.

So far, we’ve produced no experts to follow in the footsteps of our world champion kite sailors, but our newly minted, foiling 15-year-olds are about same age as six-time Formula Kite World Champion and StFYC member Daniela Moroz when she first launched from Crissy Field Beach adjacent to our clubhouse.

All my kids want to foil. That’s why the dinghy park is not Waszp-free.

Everything happening at once? We’re planning a free one-day clinic for Fevas and Teras on the Friday ahead of their Pacific Coast Championships, July 22-23, 2023. We believe in Teras as singlehanded trainers and Fevas as a doublehanded tweener. Both fleets deserve to grow, and the reasonably-priced Feva, with its asymmetric kite and rotomolded skiff shape, is a planing thrill ride and a great stepping-stone to the next fast thing.

That is why we’re offering clinics for both fleets, and that is why we’re making the clinics free, with the St. Francis Sailing Foundation making it possible. Tera coaching at press time is TBA, but Feva World Champion Ben Hutton-Penman will coach Fevas. That’s one big, y’all come.

Meanwhile, a cadre of our older teens will soon be off to C420 regattas on Lake Michigan and the East Coast of the United States. The C420 was designed in 1959, so cutting edge it’s not, but with C420s we get to teach spinnaker and trapeze, unlike with the white-sails-only FJs our kids have to sail to participate in high school sailing in the Pacific Coast district.

Just as every club has its own character, capabilities and limitations, we work with ours. StFYC walked away from spring-semester high school sailing beginning in 2018 to offer a bigger experience of sailing. But to be clear: Any of our seven high school teams that choose to race spring regattas on their own are supported with cheap boat charters and encouragement. The coaches are meanwhile coaching elsewhere. Some teams carry on, and it’s good for them.

For international readers: In the USA, our high school sailing teams race in a system building from the local to the regional to the national level in robust, simple dinghies designed seven decades ago. The high school system feeds effectively into the college system, based on a similar model and often indicted for diverting potential Olympians in critical years of their development. I could easily and unnecessarily scratch open sores and so…

Moving on quickly, I note that our StFYC coaches care very much about the big-picture fun factor to set the hook for a lifetime of sailing. A kid can be a kid around here, but our home in the maw of the Golden Gate wind funnel does not accommodate casual picnic outings. We have an island in the Sacramento Delta for that.

And when it comes to the popular game of comparing class versus class, it occurs to me that for as long as I’ve been sailing, I’ve had friends in Southern California agonizing over the value of Sabots, with their leeboards and a distribution of 100 miles, versus Optis with a reach that girdles the globe. Not to worry about the subset of over-ambitious parents who pop up in any class, I observe simply that SoCal kids sail Sabots, and SoCal kids sail Optis, and when they move to their next boats, they’re the same sailors.

StFYC’s Hoel Menard as a teen skipper was part of our brief flowering as a center of ripping it in Nacra 15 performance catamarans. Now he tells me he’s still learning, sailing alongside UC Santa Barbara sailors in pokey ole FJs.

We ran our Opti Heavy Weather Regatta, with a Slalom, June 15-18, with a few folks asking the Annual Question: “If we sold off all our Optis in favor of Teras, because a Tera is a boat, not a box, and you don’t have to sail-and-bail, sail-and-bail, why run a regatta that our own kids won’t enter?

The answer will remain the same: Because it’s a great event. Kids from Vancouver to San Diego come here to race and get thrashed and go home with bragging rights. Ask Charlie Buckingham how he felt when he won the first one in 2002. By the way, none of our kids worry about any of this. They just want to get out on the water.

J/22 Program

The J/22 fleet, owned by the St Francis Sailing Foundation and maintained by the St Francis Yacht Club, is much beloved and well-utilized. The fleet started with ten boats christened in 2010 and in 2023, an additional three boats were added to the fleet for a total of 13 boats.

Boat equality is a fundamental requirement in both team and match racing. Once the equipment is equal, the sailors’ capabilities become the primary determinant of outcomes. The Foundation’s J/22 boat program responds to this essential need by providing identical boats of equal age, construction specifications, rigging, sails and level of maintenance for training, practicing and racing in local team and match race events.

Over the years, the J/22 fleet has provided ample opportunities for practice and racing, junior, and learn-to-sail programs. The fleet has been invaluable in promoting sailor development specifically in competitive team and match racing, a format that has grown in significance in the national and international sailing community. The fleet has also been used to host world championship challenge regattas.

In an arrangement with St. Francis Yacht Club, the fleet has full time professional management which assures globally superior race training and competition potential for committed racers.

All photos courtesy of Chris Ray.

Published on August 18th, 2024 | by Editor

Reunion of sailing’s purest vanguards

Published on August 18th, 2024 by Editor -->

If you watched the Paris 2024 Olympics, it would not be unfair to say how boardsailing has a speed addition. The new equipment for Windsurf and Kite events have foils, and go blistering fast. So, it is with some curiosity how the fastest growing segment for board events – wingfoiling – has slowed down.

Trading complexity for convenience, sailors may still be on foiling boards, but in their hands is a wing sail. “In other sailing disciplines there is usually a sail and a mast connected to a boat, but we are physically holding our wings in the air,” noted Makani Andrews, Windsurfing Bronze Medalist at 2024 Youth Sailing World Championships.

While not as speedy as windsurf or kite rigs, wingfoil interest is spawning an increase in competition which included the inaugural U.S. WingFoil Championship . Phil Muller, US Sailing’s Youth Performance Manager, shares his experience from the event:

“Welcome to Wing Ding” regatta chairman Geoff Headington heralded to a room full of former windsurfers, kiters, dinghy sailors, paddlers and surfers who assembled at St. Francis Yacht Club recently for three days of wing foil racing that included slalom, course and a long-distance race from Crissy Field to Berkeley Pier and back.

After logging 150 miles of WingFoil racing, I now find myself at San Francisco airport on Sunday night, in a state of euphoria and exhaustion that might make me look like I’ve spent too much time on Haight-Ashbury. But the truth is, I just attended an almost spiritual reunion of sailing’s purest vanguards.

This event attracted WingFoilers from all corners – California, Washington, Hawaii, Mexico, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Florida, Puerto Rico. Boys and girls, men and women, from ages 12 to 68 years spent the weekend chasing one of St Francis’ favorite sons, Johnny Heineken, around the city front.

When I first came to San Francisco in 1998 for the U.S. Windsurfing Nationals, I was immediately blown away by the level of sailing, harshness of condition, and camaraderie in the parking lot of Crissy Field. Twenty-six years later not much has changed. The sailing zeitgeist continues, and the Bay remains a crucible for innovation, having birthed kite racing, kite foiling, windsurf foiling, and now WingFoiling.

My host and longtime windsurfing campaigner and friend, Steve Bodner, commented that if it weren’t for the yachts ripping across the City Front during the 34th America’s Cup, we wouldn’t have the WingFoil races we did today. Who’s to say exactly which factors led us to this moment, but the fact remains that San Francisco has always been the heart of innovation in our sport.

Everything we believe sport can do for us as humans; uniting young and old, pushing ourselves beyond our current capabilities, testing the mind and body, the joy and hardship of processing your own performance—these things and more were felt by all competitors this weekend.

What strikes me as particularly satisfying about the 2024 Wing Ding is how it brought together people from all different age groups and various parts of our extended sailing family, for example:

Legendary designer Pete Melvin and his son James; Windsurfing Hall of Famer Nevin Sayre and his son Rasmus; regatta host Geoff Headington and his son Morgan; 4x SUP World Champion Fiona Wylde brought a crew of water-women from Hood River; former Stanford Sailing Captain, Yuri Namikawa, and husband Cole Hatton both competed; F4 founder Al Meril and son Kai; WindClub Hawaii showed up with van full of gear and a posse of under 19 foilers that lit up the water; and the list goes on.

I’ve been to hundreds of awards ceremonies and St. Francis continues to deliver great food, raucous laughter, and an environment for building strong friendships. Many thanks to the club members and leaders who continue to support our slice of the sailing community.

As the sailing world tackles issues of participation, representation, and enjoyment the phrase “back in my day” reveals a growing divide between generations. My own catalog of sepia-toned memories from yesteryear continue to call me back to the water.

For those who don’t consider these Wing Dinging highfliers true “sailors,” that’s fine. The fact remains that whatever barriers hold us back, a bunch of sailors from every corner accumulated nearly 10,000 miles of buoy racing in San Francisco Bay.

Photos: https://usst.photoshelter.com/galleries/C0000cETlicxfMoA/2024-U-S-WingFoil-Championship

Tags: Phil Muller , US WingFoil Championship , wingfoil

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Home  News  2024 U.S. WingFoil Championship Perspective from Phil Muller  

2024 U.S. WingFoil Championship Perspective from Phil Muller  

From Phil Muller, US Sailing’s Youth Performance Manager:  

After logging 150 miles of WingFoil racing, I now find myself at San Francisco airport on Sunday night, in a state of euphoria and exhaustion that might make me look like I’ve spent too much time on Haight-Ashbury. But the truth is, I just attended an almost spiritual reunion of sailing’s purest vanguards.  

This event attracted WingFoilers from all corners – California, Washington, Hawaii, Mexico, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Florida, Puerto Rico. Boys and girls, men and women , from ages 12 to 68 years spent the weekend chasing one of St Francis’ favorite sons, Johnny Heineken, around the city front.   

My host and longtime windsurfing campaigner and friend, Steve Bodner, commented that if it weren’t for the AC72s ripping across the City Front during the 34th America’s Cup, we wouldn’t have the WingFoil races we did today. Who’s to say exactly which factors led us to this moment, but the fact remains that San Francisco has always been the heart of innovation in our sport.  

What strikes me as particularly satisfying about the 2024 Wing Ding is how it brought together people from all different age groups and various parts of our extended sailing family, for example:   

Legendary designer Pete Melvin and his son James; Windsurfing Hall of Famer Nevin Sayre  and his son Rasmus; regatta host Geoff Headington and his son Morgan; 4x SUP World Champion Fiona Wylde brought a crew of water-women from Hood River; former Stanford Sailing Captain, Yuri Namikawa, and husband Cole Hatton both competed; F4 founder Al Meril and son Kai; WindClub Hawaii showed up with van full of gear and a posse of under 19 foilers that lit up the water; and the list goes on.   

As the sailing world tackles issues of participation, representation, and enjoyment the phrase “back in my day” reveals a growing divide between generations. My own catalog of sepia-toned memories from yesteryear continue to call me back to the water. For those who don’t consider these Wing Dinging highfliers true “sailors,” that’s fine. The fact remains that whatever barriers hold us back, a bunch of sailors from every corner accumulated nearly 10,000 miles of buoy racing in San Francisco Bay this weekend.  

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