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Brisk breezes hard to come by

By DAVE ELLIS
Published June 28, 2006

The sailboat racing season in the Tampa Bay area is among the busiest in the country. But all of that activity is largely limited to nine months.

When the water begins to heat up in Tampa Bay, the wind tends to die. Along the beaches and on Boca Ciega Bay there often is a sea breeze in the afternoon. On the Tampa side of the bay, the sea breeze often feeds the hot air inland, making for good afternoon westerly wind.

The St. Petersburg side of the bay, however, is influenced by the hot air rising from the developed Pinellas peninsula, causing puffy cumulus clouds over the Disston Ridge of St. Petersburg. The rising hot air pulls a surface breeze from the Gulf, but also the other way from the bay. This causes an easterly "bay breeze' opposed to the gulf sea breeze. The result is usually a line of light wind close to the St. Petersburg shore and no wind elsewhere on this side of Tampa Bay.

Only when those mid-Pinellas clouds disappear or move eastward will the sea breeze make it to western Tampa Bay. Usually it appears at the south end first, spilling around Pinellas Point or streaming out of Bayboro Harbor after going across the less developed areas of Clam Bayou, Lake Maggiori and Salt Creek.

Old-timers recall when the sea breeze regularly got to the St. Petersburg waterfront by mid-afternoon. Until the 1920s, there was a sailing barge that started from the ice plant on Salt Creek early in the morning, using the easterly. By noon it would be west of where the Skyway now crosses the bay. Soon thereafter, the westerly sea breeze propelled him to Cortez to supply the commercial fisherman with ice packed in sawdust.

Historically, the big thunderheads that would rise in the center of the state would be pushed by the stronger east Florida sea breeze and the Bermuda High to rumble over Tampa Bay and out into the Gulf in the late afternoon. This was an everyday occurrence with heavy rain, impressive lightning and a short period of high wind.

In the past decade these classic storms have become less prevalent. Last summer only a few days produced the bay-crossing storms and there have been none this year.

A silver lining to this change is the evening series racing held at Davis Island Yacht Club, St. Petersburg Yacht Club, Treasure Island Tennis and Yacht Club, Clearwater Yacht Club and Bradenton Yacht Club.

SPYC, for example, has not lost any races to thunderstorms on Friday evenings this year and lost few last year. Up to 25 keelboats have enjoyed good sailing around the waters near the St. Petersburg Municipal Pier starting at 6:30.

Winds almost always are from the west, sea breeze direction by that time of evening.

Davis Island on Thursday evening sees more than 50 boats ranging from larger keelboats to dinghies, catamarans and windsurfers racing in the evening breeze.

Closer to the Gulf, the Treasure Island and Clearwater clubs are likely to have steadier westerly breezes for their evening racing.

Gulfport Yacht Club on lower Boca Ciega Bay hosts performance catamarans the first and third Saturdays of each month. There have been good breezes, in spite of a 1 p.m. start.

TRANSBAY RACE: The annual Transbay Race to the east side of Tampa Bay concluded the sailing season June 10. Nineteen keelboats took a little over two hours for the trip.

Conditions were perfect for the performance Martin 243 of Mike Siedlecki, as he saved his boat's handicap time to win the Spinnaker A class over George Haynie's J-35 Time Bandit. This was the same result as last year for this race course.

Spinnaker B was led by the well-sailed Soverel 26 of Richard Neal and crew. George DiNisio sailed his Creekmore 23 to the Spinnaker C title while Sonia-Cate, a Catalina 400 skippered by Don Miller, led the True Cruising class. The non-spinnaker group leader was Richard Borde on Freedom Flyer.

[Last modified June 28, 2006, 07:02:16]