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Catching the Breeze, San Francisco Bay
The year before gold was discovered a total of four ships arrived in San Francisco. One year later 777 vessels from the East Coast alone arrived in the city. At that time the fastest path to reach San Francisco was the perilous voyage far south around Cape Horn. Between 1849 and 1900 an estimated 10,000 sailing ships made the trip, but only 26 passages were made in less than 100 days, and thus entered maritime history's famed "100-day Club." The opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 reduced the sailing distance from New York to San Francisco by 7,872 miles.
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