I come from a sailing family. No one can adequately understand the childhood of someone whose parents are sailors. Every weekend is spent on a boat. Every vacation is spent on a boat. You learn how to swim and tie knots and use terms like “starboard” and “winch” before any of your friends who happen not to be the kids of other sailors. The only sport that matters is sailing, and you can’t wait until your parents trust you enough to put you in a boat of your own. Racing becomes as comfortable as breathing, and one day you realize you’ve never learned to ski or traveled to a landlocked state. And yet there is no resentment. Once sailing gets in your blood it never leaves you: the freedom and power of harnessing the wind on water is like nothing else.
The St. Francis Yacht Club[A], located at 700 Marina Blvd, was founded in 1927 when members of the San Francisco Yacht Club, which was actually located first in Sausalito, and later Belvedere, wanted a clubhouse in the City. Willis Polk[1] was hired to design the St. Francis Clubhouse on landfill that had been created for the 1915 Pan Pacific Exposition[2]. It was a small club, and did not gain attention until 1936 when the yacht Dorade won the TransPacific Race from Los Angeles to Honolulu. Built by American yacht designer Olin Stephens in 1929, it was purchased by James Flood[3] and berthed at the St. Francis Yacht Club. Dorade would go on to win the TransPac again in 2013, this time under the ownership of Matt Brooks.
Today the St. Francis Yacht Club is considered one of the most prestigious yacht clubs in the United States, and shares reciprocity privileges with other prominent yacht clubs including The Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club, La Societe Nautique de Geneva, and the Norddeutscher Regatta Verein. Membership is by invitation only. It hosts over 40 sailing events a year, including the Rolex Big Boat Series and the Opti Heavy Weather Regatta.
The Big Boat Series is a four day event and is considered the West Coast’s premier regatta. It started in 1964 with nine yachts from Northern and Southern California that competed for the St. Francis Perpetual Trophy. In 2003 there were 115 competitors. Rolex became the sponsor in 2005 and today trophies are awarded to six boat classes.
The Opti Heavy Weather Regatta is for kids under the age of 16 who try their luck racing Optis in wicked weather conditions. Competitors come from the West Coast and Canada. They are serious racers: all of them have personal coaches who travel with them. Optis are a class of boat designed in 1947 and are one of the more popular sailing dinghies in the world.
On December 21, 1976 the original clubhouse caught fire after a Christmas party. One visiting guest was killed and seven others were injured. The half of the clubhouse that burned down was quickly rebuilt. The building was once again severely damaged after the Loma Prieta quake in 1989[4], requiring extensive foundation repairs.
My grandfather, Chris Thomas Gasparich (1907-1985) immigrated to San Francisco from Yugoslavia when he was 14. He lived with his widower uncle and three children in the Sunset District. He found work in a hotdog factory, but eventually became an expert carpenter, opening his own business, Chris Refrigeration, at the corner of Fourth and Howard in the Mission. He built refrigeration systems for supermarket chains. There was a thriving Croatian community both in San Francisco and in Richmond, and it was at a community function that Chris met Jenny Pleich (1912-1979). Jenny was born in Richmond to Croatian immigrants. She could not speak English when she went to school and it so traumatized her that she refused to speak anything but English around her own children. Chris and Jenny married in 1930 and bought a newly built Doelger house[5]in the Sunset District. They would have two children: my father Chris George Gasparich and my aunt Jennifer Gasparich Wreden. Jennifer tells the story that, one day when she was young, Chris Sr. came home holding a picture of a single-man tub-shaped boat and announced that he was going to build one. Jenny sewed the sail for it and when it was built Chris Sr. and his neighbor took the boat across the San Francisco Bay from Aquatic Park[6] to Sausalito. Jennifer doesn’t remember him ever sailing that boat again, but so began the family’s involvement with sailing. Chris Sr. would own several boats, one being a wooden Winward No. 10 that he also built. The family spent every weekend on the Bay. They would race as a family and sometimes they would spend the night in a cove of Angel Island[7] (at the time, the island was a military base and off-limits to the public). Summer vacations were spent tied up to a riverbank in SteamBoat Slough on the Sacramento River.
Chris Jr. attended Lincoln High School and participated in the Junior Youth Program at the St. Francis Yacht Club racing Star boats. He earned an undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley, served three years in the Army and returned to UC Berkeley to earn a law degree from Bolt Hall. While in law school he met my mother Anne who was an undergraduate. Fittingly, their first date was on a boat.
Chris Jr. had two passions: the law and sailing. When I was growing up, he worked six days a week and sailed on Sunday. In the beginning, when he was not racing, he would take my brother Chris “Tony” Gasparich and me out on the Bay. And just as he had done as a child, we spent every summer vacation at SteamBoat Slough. In 1975 Chris Jr. skippered a boat in the Trans Pacific Race (Chris Sr. had skippered a boat in the TransPac, and Tony would go on to do the same). Big boat racing was just becoming popular in the Bay Area, and Chris Jr. would eventually buy a Farr 42 named Monique (requiring a crew of 10) that he competitively raced for 15 years. He was an annual participant in the Big Boat Series. He died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 61 doing what he loved most: racing in the Bay.
[1] Willis Polk: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=5219
[2] 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition: story coming February 20th
[3] James Flood: story coming October 25th
[4] Loma Prieta Earthquake: story coming October 17th
[5] Doelger Houses: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4584
[6] Aquatic Park: story coming October 6th
[7] Angel Island: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=3487
I was wondering if you ever thought of changing the structure of your blog? Its very well written; I love what youve got to say. But maybe you could a little more in the way of content so people could connect with it better. Youve got an awful lot of text for only having 1 or two pictures. Maybe you could space it out better?
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