SF Bay Adventure’s Schooner Freda B on the bay. Courtesy image.
“She was an amazing woman,” O’Neill says.
In recent months, the Freda B has been marooned, forced to sit idle in Sausalito because of COVID-19 health and safety protocols.
“We have been largely closed since mid-March in response to the pandemic,” O’Neill wrote to SF Bay’s customers. “Since then, we’ve been busy re-organizing, strategizing, securing PPE and training our crew to meet the (ever-changing) moment. We’re happy to announce that we’re ready to re-open our decks! Per the current Marin County guidelines, we are now offering sails with limited capacity.”
Marin County guidelines now allow charter boats to operate with 12 or fewer passengers email for availability and a quote. They also have several public sails, including the Friday Night Sunset Sail in the coming weeks and a Full Moon Sail on August 3.
O’Neill also launched a Go Fund Me campaign just a few weeks ago in an effort “to stay balanced. The pandemic has had a huge impact on friends, family and our thriving little business. We still need to ask for your support. If you can help us in any way, it will go directly to keeping our business afloat so we can pay our employees and slip rents, maintain our boats and support the maritime vendors that we depend on and that rely on us in turn.”
The Schooner Freda B. was built in 1991 and acquired by SF Bay Adventures in 2005, relocating it from Florida via the Panama Canal before sailing it into the San Francisco Bay after an 84-hour transit from Ensenada, Mexico. It’s a replica of a boat that would’ve sailed up and down the Pacific coast in the 1800s.