February 13, 2019

Simon Winer and Claire Arbour

Now living in Point Richmond, Simon Winer is from South Africa from "back before the polar caps melted," and his wife, Claire Arbour, is from "the banks of a lazy river in New Jersey."

Claire messed around in rowboats before following her sister onto the ocean in tall ship sailing. She worked in the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Northwest "on these beasts that were used as education programs." says Simon.

"When I moved to the Bay Area, I was determined to learn how to 'really' sail," said Claire. "With Simon's support, I hopped on smaller and smaller boats until I found myself racing a Byte (once I learned to keep it upright long enough to cross a startline). The goal was to get on a boat where there was less yelling and faster learning — turns out being on a boat by myself didn't mean less yelling (who knew?!), but the immediate consequences were great teachers."

Simon sailed "on a muddy lake with family on a terrible little keelboat and also in Optimists." He learned about sailing by reading books and bashing around in his family's boat. He went on to cross many oceans with adventures sized to match, and he raced in college and beyond. Simon's stories about his sailing exploits and experiences could inspire any fun-loving adventurer to go to sea.

Simon met Claire through a friend. "We have a common friend who sailed with Claire on a Master Mariners. He is married and recommended that, since she had just moved west, she call me if she wanted to sail little boats. Our first meeting was to race a Wylie Wabbit, but it was too honking so we went out to Point Bonita in my Cal 36 and had a wonderful time, with sparks flying — so many that I overshot the return to the slip. I thought I was doomed but she did come back and now has sailed on the front end of Gruntled a lot." Gruntled is Simon's Moore 24 with boat partner Bart Hackworth.

They bought the Schumacher 39 Recidivist. "She is in rehab, so most of our sailing is laminating," says Simon. "Claire is sailing more than me. She has a Byte collecting moss, sails on the Santana 22 Byte Size a bit, and is also sailing on Wild Card, a Santa Cruz 37 to get some bigish boat experience." Simon has been co-owner of Gruntled since the '90s and has sailed extensively and very successfully in the Moore fleet. In the 2019 Three Bridge Fiasco, Claire and Anna Alderkamp won their division on Anna's Byte Size, while Simon and Bart won the Moore 24 division (again) on Gruntled. Lately Simon can be found either helming the Richmond Yacht Club as its 2019 commodore, or rebuilding Recidivist in preparation for future adventures.

"As long as there are a few crew between us, sailing brings us together," says Simon. "When not racing, we like cruising together and get on great, especially without anyone between us. We took our Moore to Baja by trailer and sailed in the Sea of Cortez to celebrate Thanksgiving a few years back."

"We both love getting away from the buzz and bustle of crowded life, waking up in a quiet place away from people, seeing and experiencing the unusual and unique," says Claire. "When racing, we're both pretty competitive and love the magic of a well-coordinated crew working together to get where we're going as fast as possible."

"There is all sorts of loose talk about what we will do aboard Recidivist — as long as it is fun, we will keep doing it," said Simon. "I have cruised a lot but could never subject myself to a slow and rolling cruiser. As it is, I stamp my feet every time we miss a surfable wave, and that is how I imagine cruising: Steer DOWN Claire... yeeehaaah!"

They got engaged in Ayala Cove, at a raft-up with some of good sailing friends in attendance, and Claire's ring has that lat/long inscribed in it.

The couple pause for bubbly following their wedding ceremony at RYC.
Photo by Darwin Garza

"We got married at the best yacht club on the Bay. We departed on a Whitehall — 20 strokes and we had to stop for bubbles," said Simon.