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Sailing Science Center News
April 2025
Vol. 8, No. 8
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Welcome to the April issue of the Sailing Science Center News! The theme this month is Art as we tip our hats to the A in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math), knowing that the others would all be lost without a degree of art.
For additional thoughts on how Art interacts with the other elements of STEAM, read this month's Leadership Blog, Nail Polish Everywhere!
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Do you like what the Sailing Science Center is doing? We depend on support from people like you to keep it going. If you haven't donated yet, please consider doing so. If you have donated, Thank You, we appreciate your support and hope you will continue partnering with us to make the vision of a larger, permanent museum a reality. | | | | |
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Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once you grow up.
— Pablo Picaso
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VASILIA MARTHA EMMANOUILIDES | | |
In its early days, the SSC changed STEM into STEAM, adding Art to what we do. Vasilia Martha Emmanouilides is helping the SSC to create that art.
Vasilia's parents encouraged her to follow her dreams. Her father was a pediatric cardiologist at Harbor-UCLA, while her mother—whose Greek immigrant parents told her that girls do not go to college—instead found work as the secretary to the team developing the ENIAC, one of the first electronic computers.
| | Vasilia studied pre-med at UC Santa Barbara, intending to follow in her father’s footsteps, but took enough art classes to graduate with degrees in both Cell Biology and Art Studio. She decided against medical school, and after working as a lab assistant—which included retrieving cow brains for their research from an LA slaughterhouse—she realized that biological research was not for her either. As a child, drawing, painting, sewing and crafts were her passion. She loved making things, and redirected her energy toward a career in art and design, working at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, as the Assistant to the Director of Public Art for the City and County of Santa Barbara, and for a signage shop, creating signs and exhibits for local museums. She says “it was much better than cow brains.” | | After 11 years in Santa Barbara, Vasilia had the urge to travel. A road trip to Colorado ended up in Ireland, working with a professor to record oral histories about Dublin’s Inner City pubs. A year later, she returned to California, this time to San Francisco, where she volunteered at the Maritime Museum’s Hyde Street Pier, making ditty bags, and learning to splice lines and cables. She landed a dream job doing packaging design at Galoob Toys. Galoob coworkers introduced her to the Women’s Sailing Seminar, starting her journey of sailing and racing on the Bay. | | After Galoob, Vasilia went to USWeb/CKS, and worked as a production artist on Apple’s graphic design team, launching many of Apple’s iconic projects. Next was SYPartners, a niche strategy and design firm, where she worked with the leadership teams of Fortune 100 companies like HP, Starbucks, Nike, and Target. She moved to Manhattan with SYP. One of her favorite projects there was helping to create IBM’s Centennial Exhibit at Lincoln Center. But the best part of New York was joining the Hudson River Community Sailing Club. She raced J24s on the Hudson River, met new sailing buddies, and sailed on bigger boats in Long Island Sound and Raritan Bay. | Above: Vasilia, helming on the East River | | She returned to California in 2012, and today races on Santana 22s with the Island Yacht Club. Vasilia first encountered the SSC at the 2023 Latitude 38 Crew List Party (see below). She has been a big part of the SSC since then, designing greeting cards, and creating the stick people used in the SSC’s recent galas. Her design and photography are at a level above, helping the SSC to keep the Art in STEAM. | | |
Above: Vasilia's stick people from the SSC 2024 Gala
All photos courtesy of Vasilia Martha Emmanouilides
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Humans began decorating caves at least 30,000 years ago.
— Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
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Lauren Sauer stands behind her kids at the Otis Elementary PTA Day
Photo by Jim Hancock
The SSC event at Otis Elementary on March 20th, stood out for three reasons:
- It was our first time taking an SSC exhibit directly to a school.
- It was our first time leaving an exhibit unfacilitated, just for the kids to play.
- It was our first time presenting an SSC exhibit to kids younger than 7.
We weren't sure how it would go. Turns out, it went much better than expected. Here's what we learned:
- If left alone (with light oversight to protect the equipment), kids as young as four are perfectly able to figure out how to make a boat sail upwind!
- The errors they make are predictable, but so is the progression to success.
- The SSC Land Yachts can easily keep kids engaged for 15 to 20 minutes, which is long by museum exhibit standards.
We are very excited by what we learned at this event, and are appreciative to Lauren Sauer and Otis Elementary for such a great opportunity.
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Above: Bret Harte students engage with SSC exhibits and volunteers at the Shorebird Park Nature Center
Photo by Jim Hancock
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Above: SSC volunteers joke around after putting away exhibits.
L to R: Lars Anderson, Pam Schaffer, Maggie Garside Heilman, and Fred King
Photo by Jim Hancock
On March 25th the SSC held its fourth event in partnership with Pegasus Voyages, this time with students from Bret Harte Middle School. These events continue to produce solid, positive feedback on the SSC approach, providing proof points that SSC exhibits are fun and interesting to sailors and non-sailors, alike.
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Chabot's Brian Linke, briefing SSC volunteers at the start of the visit. | | Lars Anderson's wind turbine in the Chabot wind tunnel. | | On March 15th, the SSC held it's second major volunteer event of the year, treating volunteers to lunch and free admission to the Chabot Space & Science Center. The visit was a great opportunity to study and learn how another museum approaches its exhibits and its audience. | | | | |
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Have you thought about volunteering?
The SSC is always looking for good crew!
Click below to sign up.
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The best art is where the artist is trying to make it for themselves.
— Alex Hormozi, entrepreneur
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If you could follow an air molecule as it passed over an airplane wing or around a boat's sail, the path it traced would be called a streamline. When streamlines follow even, parallel patterns, we call it smooth, or laminar flow, while more chaotic patterns involving eddies and mixing is called turbulent flow. It's a mistake to think that one is good and one is bad—it depends on on your point of sail. Turbulent flow can be exactly what you want if you are sailing downwind.
We put telltales on the sails to detect the kind of flow, but the information they provide is limited to a single point. To see all of what's happening, you need some form of flow visualization. This is one of the functions of wind tunnels, and why the SSC is thrilled to now have a desktop wind tunnel (see below) in its inventory!
| | Smooth, or laminar flow, over the sail of a boat sailing upwind. | | Turbulent flow behind the sail of a boat sailing downwind. | | | | |
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A surprise email from the SailGP team on March 23rd announced that they were changing course for SailGP Inspire, and asked if the Sailing Science Center wanted their Deskbreeze mini wind tunnel. We were on it in a heartbeat, and the SSC now possesses this very cool exhibit for visualizing streamlines as they flow over, and around, a sail.
The most creative part of the unit is the fog generator that uses dry ice in a water tank, heated by an aquarium heater, to produce ribbons of vapor for following the streamlines. We will be incorporating the unit into our repertoire later this season.
| | SAILING SCIENCE CENTER 2025 GALA | | November 15th is the day! Mark your calendar now so you don't miss the Sailing Science Center's 6th Annual Gala. Details to follow. | | The SSC continues to scan the horizon for a workshop to build new exhibits. This could be a dedicated or shared space. Expected use is one to two days per month. Please contact us if you have leads or ideas. | | | | |
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LATITUDE 38 CREW LIST PARTY | | |
The Latitude 38 Spring Crew List Party is on, with a new location at the Bay View Boat Club. The SSC will be there; you should be too!
Date: Thursday, April 3
Time: 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Location: Bay View Boat Club, 489 Terry A Francois Blvd, San Francisco
| | INTERNATIONAL OCEAN FILM FESTIVAL | | |
Since 2004, the International Ocean Film Festival has been recognized as the world's premier ocean-themed film festival for its compelling, inspiring, and thought-provoking independent films. 2025 marks their 22nd year. We are pleased to be offering a special discount for SSC volunteers using the code above. The SSC will be there this year, tabling on on Saturday, April 12th, from 3-10 pm. Come see the films! Come see the SSC!
Dates: April 11-13 (the SSC will be tabling April 12)
Location: Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco
| | CALL OF THE SEA TALL SHIP CELEBRATION | | |
April 26th marks the Sailing Science Center's 5th year supporting Call of the Sea's Tall Ship Celebration at the Bay Model in Sausalito. This is where it all began, with our first public event in the spring of 2021. The 2025 event will be one of the few public opportunities this year to see the SSC's full complement of exhibits.
Make waves with our Wave Tank! Sail upwind with our Land Yachts! Design the fastest (or slowest) hydrodynamic shape with our Density Drop! Unmask the mysteries of Coriolis with the SSC Coriolis Globe! Or get a grip on the seafloor with our Anchoring Sandbox! The event is free and open to the public. Come see us and say Hi!
Date: Saturday, April 26
Time: 10:00 am to 2:00 pm
Location: Bay Model Visitor Center, Sausalito
Cost: Free, Open to the Public
More: Event Details & Tickets for Sailing Tours
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The bow of an Etchells pierces a wave during a 2024 regatta on San Francisco Bay.
Art lies not just in what is seen, but in what is missing. What story is told? Are they winning? Who are the crew? How big was the wave? Seeing would ruin the allure.
| | Photo by Martha Blanchfield / Renegade Sailing | | | | |
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Her nail polish flew everywhere as her boyfriend slammed on the brakes of his GTO. The car stopped from 60 mph in 3.0 seconds, with a deceleration of 29 ft/s2, altering the nail polish bottle’s local gravity by 42.3°. Art and science. Both describe our world. Is one better than the other? Read more…
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That's all for this month.
Cheers!
Jim Hancock
President and Founder
| | The San Francisco Sailing Science Center is a Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation recognized under IRS Section 501(c)(3), Tax ID 82-3631165. Your donation to the Sailing Science Center is tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law. | | The Sailing Science Center News is published monthly. It is sent to team members, partners, volunteers, sponsors and supporters of the San Francisco Sailing Science Center. You are receiving this because you are considered to be in one of these groups. If you wish to be removed from the mailing list, please click the Unsubscribe link below. We do not sell, share or otherwise give out our mailing list beyond our organization. | | | | |
