Bay Area Sailors in South Padre

lakesailor17 · Joined: 21 Jan 2008 Posts: 17

I sailed South Padre over Thanksgiving weekend and met a group from the Bay Area. It’s serious dedication to drive 40 hours for a week of warm weather sailing.

This inspired me. I thought about taking an RV for 2-3 weeks to experience the west coast windsurfing. If I started in the gorge and worked my way down the coast, what are the classic places to sail - OR coast, the Bay Area, Central CA or anything else that I may be missing? I’ll be doing this in June. Do you think that 2-3 weeks is enough time to cover the good sailing sites on the west coast?

jse · Joined: 17 Apr 1995 Posts: 1460 Location: Maui

June is great in the Bay Area. All the usual spots are firing. However if you park your RV at Tomales, you might make some locals upset. There's room for about 10 cars there. One RV would take up a lot of spaces.

Steve

jordanwd · Joined: 20 May 2007 Posts: 158

Wow, small world; i was fishing at SPI over T-giving.. i actually left this morning to head over to colorado... did you get any of it yesterday? 5.0 in the morning and 4.2 by noon w/ head high surf... didn't even know there was anyone else from cali down there...

jordanwd · Joined: 20 May 2007 Posts: 158

isobars · Joined: 12 Dec 1999 Posts: 20935

coachg · Joined: 10 Sep 2000 Posts: 3550

Short answer is yes. That is one of the best times out here. You can drive from the Gorge to the bay area or bay area to Socal in a day. The only limitation you may have is the RV. As jse pointed out, some of the sites are just not RV friendly.

If you tow another vehicle with you then you could use Sherman as base camp and hit all the bay area spots. Many people do that, including the Euros.

Coachg

jimwilkins · Joined: 08 Feb 2008 Posts: 70

To qoute Delta windsurf; " think Rio Daze" ...

Arrgh · Joined: 05 May 1998 Posts: 864 Location: Rio

Yes, yes, 2-3 months should be just about perfect!

lakesailor17 · Joined: 21 Jan 2008 Posts: 17

My plan is to sail 1 maybe 2 days at each location, depending on the fun factor for the site and the conditions/forecast. I’d really like to see as many of the classic west coast sailing sites as possible. With that said, I’ll probably only stay 2 days in the gorge (if the hatchery, arlington or the wall are firing) because I’m familiar with most of the gorge sites.

With mobility, I figure that I could drive to minimize being skunked.

If the RV is a problem at many sites, I could easily skip the rv entirely and car-camp / motel for better mobility. I just figured that the rv would be easier.

As for sites, I’m only familiar with the gorge locations and some oregon coast locations. Where are the places called Tomales, Sherman, Delta, Rio? What are some of the other classic sites on the west coast.

allen · Joined: 13 Aug 1996 Posts: 237

3 costal spots not to miss as you head down from San Francisco are Davenport (just north of Santa Cruz), Arroyo Laguna (across from the Hearst Castle) and Leo Carrillo state beach (north Malibu just south of the Ventura county line)......

Rio Vista (east of SF, part of the Sacramento River Delta) is kind of a poor man's Gorge w/smaller ramps, less wind and probably dirtier water....if you've done the Gorge you could almost skip the Delta and go spots like 3rd Ave and Crissy closer to the city........The 3rd ave Channel when it's 5.0 or better is a fun place