St Francis Yacht Club Now for Kite Surfing

by Jan Pehrson/Sail-World Cruising on 4 Apr 2007 One of the oldest, most traditional sailing clubs in the US has gone to the extreme sport of Kite surfing in order to stay with the times.

Jan Pehrson of marinij.com quotes John Craig, race manager of the St Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco as saying, 'What used to be considered traditional racing is not continuing to grow.

'What you could call the X Games factor of our sport needs to be identified and encouraged. If we are going to try and capture the youth and bring them into the sport we need to look at what sailing in all shapes and forms can offer.'

Now you can see former surfers in front of the Club riding their kite-powered boards, launching themselves 30 to 40 feet in the air, doing mid-air flips and spins, landing it, and riding away.

Not the sort of thing you would have seen once at this bastion of sailing gentlemen in blue blazers.

'The St. Francis has given us a warm welcome,' former South African surfer and current Sausalito resident Jonathan Buys said. 'The real value for kite surfing is that we have the backing of the St. Francis which has such a big reputation for hosting events, which adds prestige to our own events. Without this support we would be dead in the water.'

This summer, July 25-29, St. Francis will host the first U.S. nationals for kite course racing, crowning the first national champion. A big-air wind jam with kiters jumping off a ramp in the bay in front of spectators will run concurrently.

'We are going to set the bar for kiting,' said San Francisco's John Gomes, developer of the St. Francis Kite Series.

The concept of harnessing a kite to a board is hardly new, but according to Gomes, the concept of racing kites around a course like sailboats originated on the San Francisco Bay three years ago when he thought of it. Working closely with St. Francis members, Gomes tested his idea on the water and founded the kite series. Next, Gomes is planning to ask that the national and international governing bodies of the sport of sailing, U.S. Sailing and International Sailing Federation, recognize kites as an official discipline. Eventually, he'd like to see kites compete in the Olympics.

Big cultural changes indeed in the world of the Sir Francis Yacht Club… Is this a trend we shall soon see in other parts of the sailing world?