Bay Model - currents

I was amazed at the Bay Model - even though it isn't used for modelling anymore, it is an astonishing piece of work and it is wonderful to see the underside of the Bay.

I carefully looked at everything that I sail through regularly. I understand why there is so much current near the Golden Gate bridge for instance, with its naturally deep water channel. You can easily see what is dredged, what is naturally deep or shallow.

The scale is huge - you can walk around the model. It is also very impressive to actually see the water level move up and down and currents appear as they simulate tide movements.

Here is the rock by the North Tower which explains sometimes some of the eddies that you see there. It is still way too deep to pose any problem to navigation but an interesting phenomenon.

I learned that most of the Bay particularly San Pablo Bay became unnaturally shallow after the Gold rush because of 40 years of water mining that drove all sorts of sediments down to the Bay where they didn't belong to begin with... Sad.

I'd say that a visit to the Bay Model is a very useful racing tool and I'd recommend this to all SF Bay racers. Kame Richards from Pineapple Sails is part of the audio tour!