SIGHTINGS
BOB DAVID
a sailing thoroughbred leaps back into action Just about everywhere you look around San Francisco Bay, there are treasures of our rich maritime heritage. Some, though, are less obvious to the untrained eye than others. Take, for example, Ron MacAnnan’s classic, 82-ft woodie Pursuit, which has been lying quietly in her berth at Sausalito Yacht Harbor for decades. Although her sleek lines and tall stick might tip off a seasoned sailor that she has a special pedigree, only a minute percentage of Bay Area sailors know that she’s one of the last — if not the last — of a small cadre of prestigious racing yachts built in the ‘20s to the Universal M-Class rule. We mention this here because last month Ron and a boatload of friends took the ol’ girl out for a glorious spin around the Bay for only the second time in the past 32 years! (Her previous appearance was in ‘05 when she joined a procession of classics during Sail San Francisco.) “It felt good!” recalled Ron. “It’s been too damned long.” When we told him we were going to run a photo Ron MacAnnan. of her in the magazine, he sounded a little embarrassed, and apologized for the fact that both his jib and reefed main were set a little sloppily. But, hey, since none of Ron’s crew knew their way around the boat, we could hardly expect her to be in impeccable racing trim. “We had a good, fun sail and got home with the mast still standing,” says Ron with a chuckle. Heck, in our book, any time you meet those criteria you’ve had a successful daysail. Pursuit, which was originally named Avatar, is one of three identical sisterships built side-by-side by the German yard Abeking and Rasmussen in 1929, and one of only six true Ms ever built — although a number of older designs were rerigged and classified as M-Class yachts over the years. The other German-built sisters, designed by Burgess and Morgan of New York, were named Simba and Valiant. The only other true Ms were American-built: Prestige, designed by W. Starling Burgess; Istalena, designed by L. Francis Herreshoff; and Windward, designed by Charles Mower, and which eventually found her way to the Bay and enjoyed a colorful racing history on the West Coast before suffering an untimely death on the beach at Yalapa, Mexico. (Windward’s complete history was retold in our March and April, 2005 issues.) The Great Depression effectively killed the M Class. We know that Pursuit came west sometime in the late ‘50s, although no one seems to remember who brought her out here. She’s been Ron’s high-maintenance mistress since he bought her in ‘60, He raced her in both the ‘61 and ‘69 TransPacs, in addition to other events, and lived aboard her for 28 years. If you’re reading this on September 1, we encourage you to raise a glass to Ron and Pursuit. He turns 85 today — four years older than his boat! And if you’re out on the water on Saturday, September 4, keep an eye out for Pursuit. As a birthday present to himself, Ron is determined to put his beloved thoroughbred through her paces once again — this time with her sails trimmed smartly and her massive spinnaker billowing like a great white cloud as she roars under the Golden Gate like a freight train. Happy birthday Ron, from all of us here at Latitude. See you out there! — andy Page 78 •
Latitude 38
• September, 2010
coast guardsmen The National Transportation Safety Board revealed last month that an unspecified number of crewmembers aboard the 33-ft Coast Guard vessel that collided with a small boat in San Diego Harbor on December 20 last year were either texting or talking on their cell phones. The patrol boat was reportedly responding to a grounded vessel, and witnesses say it was traveling at 30-40 knots through waters crowded with spectators of a lighted boat parade when it hit the powerboat — which was carrying 13 passengers. Though stopping short of saying the cell phone activity were the direct cause of the accident, which killed eight-year-old
