The Low Speed Chase, a sailboat from the club here, crashed onto rocks during a regatta Saturday while racing around the Farallones, a group of uninhabited islands about 28 miles west of San Francisco. In the worst yacht racing accident in Northern California in three decades, only three of the boat’s eight crew members survived.
The accident has resonated in sailing circles in the Bay Area, where yacht clubs are a fabric of many communities and sailing, many say, is a way of life.
“It’s a very tightly knit community, so every sailor and racer in the Bay Area is going to take stock of what happened,” Ed Lynch, a director at the club, said as well-wishers greeted him outside the club building. “It’s going to be rough. It’s going to take time to get over this.”
Forty-nine boats from Bay Area yacht clubs participated Saturday in the race, which had been held annually since 1907 without incident, Lynch said. Departing from inside the bay and passing under the Golden Gate Bridge, the boats went out toward the Farallones.
Before returning, the teams had to engage in the race’s most difficult maneuver as their boats skirted one of the islands, maintaining a distance that kept them safe from the craggy shore but would not cost them time.
Most races take place inside the bay, where conditions are less harsh and unpredictable than in the Pacific. Ocean races, like last weekend’s, are usually for more experienced sailors.
According to survivors and other participants, large swells swept over the Low Speed Chase before 3 p.m. near the island, sending all but one crew member overboard, Lynch said. “They’re volcanic islands,” he said, “so they’re not surrounded by beaches, but by rugged, rocky shores covered with moss and seaweed. It makes it difficult to pull yourself out of the water.”
The conditions that morning were described as average. But David Britt, who was participating in the race for the third time and belongs to another club, said the seas grew rougher than in the previous two years. Britt’s crew gave the Farallones a wide berth as they navigated his boat, Split Water, around the island.
“We probably were maybe three times further off shore than we had been before, and we wouldn’t have wanted to be in any closer, I can tell you that,” he said.
Britt was in a group of boats just ahead of a group that included the Low Speed Chase.
“We kept looking back to see where they were after we had rounded and headed back to the city, and I didn’t see anything for a while, just one or two of the boats that stopped to coordinate the rescue,” he said.
A few days after the accident, sea lions and seals could be seen surrounding the wreck of the Low Speed Chase on the Farallones. The boat’s owner, James Bradford, 41, was one of the survivors, the authorities said.
Three of the five victims — Marc Kasanin, Jordan Fromm and Alan Cahill — were associated with the San Francisco Yacht Club, Lynch said. “Marc and Jordan grew up in this club,” he said.
Robert Griswold, another director at the club, said, “I’m not sure we know the full impact of the tragedy yet.”