Big Sail in Big Wind; Bomb Cyclones and More

A recap of the annual sailing rendition of the infamous "Big Game."

A rivalry rich with tradition, the Stanford-Cal feud extends far beyond the annual football game. The “Big Sail” is a yearly showdown between the Stanford sailing team and the Cal Sailing team, hosted at Saint Francis Yacht club, in the shadow of the golden gate bridge. The layout is as follows:

Five J-22 class sailboats are raced on either side, each with four crew members.

One boat on each side is manned by current members of their respective sailing teams, called the varsity boat. A second boat must be crewed by all women, aptly named the women’s boat, and then the remaining three are sailed by sailing alumni of varying ages: Young Alums, Masters, and then Grandmasters (60+!)

The actual logistics of the racing is a new format from last year, a 2 versus 2 team-racing round robin. Essentially, this means that a pair of Cal boats would duel it out with an opposing pair of Stanford boats, with the determining factor of declaring a winner not being the boat in first, but whichever team didn’t take fourth. While this may seem convoluted, it created a lot of tactical moments around the racecourse, helping out whichever boat found itself in last at any given moment.

- View of the sailing action from the window of Saint Francis Yacht Club

Unfortunately for us bears fans, this new format favors Stanford’s team much more than the previous one on one format, as could be seen at last years big sail, which wasn’t quite competitive, as Stanford took a clean sweep of the races.

This year, however, we had a much better run at it, far closer than the final score of 8-2, and at many points in every it looked like Cal was threatening to take back ground.

One factor that would be hard to forget about was the weather:

That’s right, the Cal-Stanford rivalry hails to no one, not even mother nature. The Big Sail sailors went out and competed in huge puffs of wind, rain, and cold just for school spirit. While the sailing portion of the event was forced to a stop after one round robin as opposed to the usual two, I don’t think many of the sailors will be forgetting the racing they did for this years “Big Sail.”

Alongside the Sailing, Big Sail is also a fun Alumni event, with both the Cal Band and the Stanford Band making an appearance. I can definitively say that the battle of the bands that occurred was one part of the day where the bears shined- much thanks to Oski.

Overall, this year’s event was a massive success! A huge thanks goes out to Saint Francis Yacht Club, for being a wonderful host for the event, and also every single Cal alum who sailed, or just showed up to support, or attended just because they hate Stanford (Who doesn’t?).

- A big thanks from the Cal Sailors! And as always, GO BEARS!