San Francisco Bay Oil Spill

Maybe some of you have heard about the oil spill that happened in San Fran Bay this week. On Wednesday we went for our first sail on Blue Yonder and as soon as we passed under the Golden Gate Bridge we noticed (and smelled) patches of thick black oil on the water. We first wondered if it was a small incident but heard on the VHF radio boats all across the bay calling in reports to the coastguard. It turns out that morning a huge container ship (810 feet long, larger than the Titanic) had run into a bridge piling and dumped a diesel fuel/oil mixture into the bay. Initial reports from the coastguard estimated the spill at 140 gallons but the actual amount was closer to 50,000 gallons. Pretty much every beach in the area is closed and dozens of birds have already been found dead...obviously the town is in an uproar and no one yet knows the cause of the incident; although it was a foggy morning, most every morning in San Francisco is. The pilot was trained specifically to go in and out of the bay and had highly sophisticated radar. We'll post an update if they ever determine the cause. Luckily we still had a great day of sailing once we got into the open ocean; though Dad had to hire a diver to clean the oil off the hull of the boat! We took the first picture below but it doesn't do justice to the amount of oil we saw on the water, the other two pictures we pulled from the San Francisco Chronicle website.