Yesterday I visited the sites for bases for the next America’s cup. The fog rolled in and out several times yesterday. Many of us are intrigued about the weather here in San Francisco, if the window for weather will co operate during the racing. These photographs were taken after noon and as you see the fog is ever present.
I was looking around on the internet for information about parking near Marina Green during the America’s Cup event in August in San Francisco. I still do not know where I can park. In today’s world it is one of the first questions one asks.
America’s Cup yacht regatta organizers are attempting to redefine sailing by offering a free show to anyone who can find a clear view of the race course on San Francisco Bay. But that’s not to say race officials will neglect sailing’s historical fan base among the rich.
Last week, the America’s Cup released VIP packages offering prime seating and other perks such as easy parking and wine tastings from top-notch Napa Valley vineyards. You and 10 guests can have all of that — over a four-day period — at a price tag of just $26,000. Individual tickets for the same four-day package will go for $3,000, and
two-day passes will cost $1,500.
The tickets are being offered for the cup’s 2012 events in San Francisco, including a round of races from Aug. 23 through Aug. 26 and another series that coincides with Fleet Week from Oct. 4 through Oct. 7. Those races will involve the AC45 boats, which will be dwarfed in comparison with the 72-foot yachts planned for the America’s Cup finals coming to San Francisco in September 2013.
The VIP area will be set up adjacent to the St. Francis Yacht Club in The City’s Marina district. Promoters have touted the America’s Cup as the third-best international revenue magnet for host cities — outdone only by the
Olympics and the World Cup.
Normally raced on the open ocean, the 2013 edition of the America’s Cup will be available for wider public view because of the highly touted “natural amphitheater” created by the rim of the Bay. For spectators, especially those willing to pay $26,000, organizers are promising a big show.
“The boats are wing-sailed catamarans, capable of sailing twice the windspeed,” says a brochure for the VIP passes. “Sailing fast is easy, maintaining control is critical, and the physical challenge imposed on the athletes is immense.”
dschreiber@sfexaminer.com
Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/2012/06/america-s-cup-vip-tickets-going-26000#ixzz227GidBVE
The America’s Cup circus arrives from Newport by train in San Francisco. 120 cars.
Ft. Ross was a Russian outpost from 1812 until 1842. California was still Mexican. I find it a fascinating piece of history.
Anyone who was not chinese had a camera around their neck; I looked just like every other tourist. It is stepping into another world; the sights and colors are exciting. I started out with a different thought for this post and as I began to look over the photos a pattern emerged; the banks. The effort they had made to integrate into the culture I found striking. The churches were another institution that made great efforts to integrate, the exception being the catholic church.
On the square was music and singing, for me one of the areas that made the cultural distinction. It would definitely not be my choice in music.
It was had to miss the reports in the news. The terrible destruction in the midwest from tornados to the spectacular light show in San Francisco. Digital photography has broadened the scope of possibility and put in it in the hands of more people than ever before. The results are showcased here.
Published April 15, 2012
| Associated Press
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SAN FRANCISCO – A powerful wave swept four crew members off a sailboat during a race near San Francisco, leaving one person dead and four others missing, the Coast Guard said early Sunday.
The eight-member crew aboard the 38-foot Low Speed Chase was participating in a yacht race from San Francisco Bay around the Farallon Islands on Saturday afternoon as their craft ran aground.
Seas were running high at 10-12 feet when the Low Speed Chase was hit by a larger wave and the four were washed overboard, Coast Guard Petty Officer Levi Read said.
“They turned the boat around to go rescue those people and they got hit by another wave,” sending the boat onto rocks, he said.
A Mayday call reporting the accident went out at about 3 p.m. PDT.
Coast Guard and National Guard helicopters and water craft rescued three crew members who were clinging to rocks, Read said. The body of the other crew member was pulled from the water.
A Coast Guard helicopter, a cutter and a smaller boat were searching the waters around the islands, 27 miles west of San Francisco, as well as shoreline areas early Sunday for the missing crew members.
Dozens of boats were registered for the Full Crew Farallones Race, running from the St. Francis Yacht Club on San Francisco Bay to the islands and back, about 60 miles round trip, Read said.
Rescuers found the three crew members on or near the shore clinging to rocks, about 300 feet from where their vessel was breaking up because of the powerful waves, he said.
They were wearing life vests and cold weather gear — equipment that gave rescuers hope in the search for the missing.
“There is the possibility that the other four were also in the same kind of gear,” Read said.
He said he didn’t know if the four missing were the same crew members who were swept from the boat.
The search was expected to continue through the night, as long as there was a chance there were survivors, the Coast Guard said.
The names of the eight crew members were not released, and there was no immediate word on the condition of the three survivors.
The Yacht Racing Association of San Francisco Bay expressed sympathy for the dead crew member and hope for those missing.
“We offer our thoughts and prayers to the family and friends of the missing crew in hopes they are returned home safely,” the association said in a statement on its website.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the Low Speed Chase is based out of the San Francisco Yacht Club, located in Marin County’s Belvedere Cove. The manager of the club declined immediate comment.
POSTED ON 27 MARCH 2012
It’s full speed ahead for the 2013 America’s Cup race in San Francisco.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors today approved the agreement to host the America’s Cup in San Francisco September 7 to 22, 2013.
One of the most fiercely competitive and sought after trophies in all of sport, the America’s Cup, was first raced in 1851 around the Isle of Wight, 45 years before the modern Olympics. The U.S. yacht Americawon, giving the international sailing competition its name.
At the first race, Queen Victoria, who was watching at the finish line, asked who was second to America. The famous answer, “Your Majesty, there is no second.”
The 2013 race will be the first time the competition for the “Auld Mug” will be held in San Francisco, a perfect natural sailing arena where more than one million spectators will see the 34th edition of the America’s Cup.
The San Francisco agreement calls for teams to be based at Piers 30/32 and for the America’s Cup Village – the public Race Headquarters – at Piers 27/29. The pier improvements will be funded by the Port.
“We have worked very hard to bring this historic race to San Francisco and we’re very happy to have finally reached an agreement,” said Stephen Barclay, interim CEO of the America’s Cup. “Now we are focused on making this the most spectacular race in America’s Cup history.”
“We are thrilled that, in addition to the Louis Vuitton Cup and the America’s Cup racing in 2013, that the America’s Cup World Series will also take place in San Francisco in 2012,” said Mayor Edwin M. Lee. “This will add even more visitors, jobs and economic development as part of hosting one of the world’s premier sporting events.”
The inclusion of Piers 30/32 as the “pit row” for the teams in close proximity to the America’s Cup Village at Piers 27/29 will make the event’s footprint more compact and will benefit the teams as well as the general public. Racing will be visible from the shoreline – only minutes from downtown shopping and hotels, making this the most spectator-friendly event in the Cup’s 162-year history.
The dates for this year’s (2012) racing for the America’s Cup World Series, the global circuit of events leading up to the 2013 America’s Cup regatta in San Francisco, were also confirmed today:
Each event will be a combination of practice and championship racing, with additional practice sailing on-site ahead of each event.
Racing for the Louis Vuitton Cup, the America’s Cup Challenger Series, will take place in July and August, 2013. The America’s Cup Match (finals), pitting the winner of the Louis Vuitton Cup against defending champion ORACLE Racing – Team USA, commences Saturday, Sept. 7, 2013 and is a first to win five-race series.
America’s Cup racing in 2012 and 2013 will be televised internationally, and for the first time in more than 20 years it will be broadcast free-to-air in the U.S. by the NBC network. It will also be broadcast internationally through our family of media partners, and will be streamed to the web on www.youtube.com/americascup.
This unprecedented broadcast coverage is a reflection of the exciting venue, the technologically-advanced yachts, the Emmy-nominated fan-friendly advances in the television production, and the sheer physical and tactical challenge presented to the world’s best sailors by the yachts, format and venue.
Before the end of 2013 the America’s Cup is expected to have generated more than $1 billion in economic benefits for San Francisco, and created several thousand jobs.
Major sponsors include some of the world’s top brands: Louis Vuitton, PUMA, Prada, Emirates Airline, TAG Heuer, and Oracle.
The business arm of the America’s Cup laid off a quarter of its staff Friday, the latest sign the premiere sailing competition has dramatically scaled back its presence — and budget — in San Francisco.
The America’s Cup Event Authority laid off 28 people, 14 of them in the San Francisco office and the other 14 in offices around the world, race officials said. They worked in the information technology, marketing and communications departments.
The shake-up stemmed from the pared-down deal between the America’s Cup and the city to host the event this year and in 2013.
“We’re having expenses match the revenues as much as we can,” said Stephen Barclay, who took over as interim CEO for the event authority this week in another sign of reorganization. “And a number of people will be leaving as a result.”
Originally, the Event Authority was going to invest $111 million in infrastructure work to repair deteriorating piers the city has sought for decades to fix. But race officials backed away from that agreement earlier this month.
The new deal, set to be considered by the Board of Supervisors Tuesday, calls for the port to invest nearly $22 million in pier repairs, including up to $8 million for team bases at Piers 30-32. A team of fundraisers, meanwhile, is responsible for raising $32 million to cover the city’s costs to put on the event, and have so far raised $12.5 million, according to a city audit released Friday.
Beyond the rollback of the development deal, the event authority is also scaling back event facilities, including no longer trying to have any at Crissy Field, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation area.
?The America’s Cup will grace San Francisco not once, not twice, but thrice, citizens were promised: before catamarans race for the main Cup currently held by Larry Ellison’s Oracle team in 2013, there will be smaller World Series races in October and in August, according to plans the race event authority floated before city leaders.
That may change, event organizers quietly mentioned in a release this week: the boats may in fact race here only twice. The August race could be in New York City, the Event Authority said in a March 5 release, issued to announce that NBC secured television broadcast rights.
This came as a surprise to San Francisco officials and New Yorkers alike, but is likely nothing more than a “head-fake” from an event authority angry over a scaled-down deal, a source told The Snitch.
It was always the plan for America’s Cup-related races to crisscross the globe this year: in a month, the race heads to Italy. Other scheduled races are planned for Venice, and Newport, Rhode Island.
Three teams are competing in the AC World Series. The location of the August event — San Francisco or New York — will be announced “shortly,” organizers said in a release.
The races will be televised for the first time since 1992.
The Event Authority itself did not deign to speak to The Snitch; phone messages and emails were unanswered as of Wednesday afternoon.
The possibility of losing a race to New York is a “surprise” to Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, involved in negotiations to scale back the waterfront land giveaway promised to race organizers in return for gracing San Francisco Bay with their boats. “This was not something I’ve been told by the AC Event Authority,” Chiu told The Snitch via text message late Wednesday.
The America’s Cup is not unknown to New York City, though it’s been a while since the boats graced those waters. When the New York Yacht Club owned the cup betweem 1930 and 1983, the race was held there all the time. The race has not been held in the Hudson since the club lost the cup in 1983.
Reached via telephone in Newport on Wednesday, Michael Levitt, communications director for the New York Yacht Club, of which Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a member, said he had yet to hear of any plans to race sailboats in New York.
Whether this came as a surprise to Mayor Ed Lee is unclear; a spokeswoman for the mayor, who last week announced a vastly scaled-back event, said that the city is “waiting to hear” if the televised race will be held in San Francisco or New York.
“This is one of a series of sailing events even in 2012, so the impacts to the City [San Francisco] will be minimal of one race is held in New York,” Lee press secretary Christine Falvey wrote in an email. “Under either scenario, there will be a regatta here in 2012.”
A source close to the opposition movement called the Event Authority’s bi-coastal hedging a “head fake” designed to keep San Francisco on its toes after waterfront development rights were scaled back.
Under the original agreement, Ellison’s race team was to spend $55 million to rebuild Piers 30 and 32 in exchange for rent-free use of them for 66 years and title to Seawall Lot 330 — all prime, undeveloped waterfront property — nearby.
Those plans — which likely could have left the city in debt until the year 2100 — were scuttled last week, after the Event Authority failed to secure sponsorship rights.
A smaller event? It seems that like so many other stories in the news, the America’s Cup has taken the philosophy that any attention is good.
