If the map looks a little funny, it’s because it includes my bike back to the Caltrain station after the Spinnaker “Beer Can” race on Wednesday, June 4. I was worried I’d miss the 8:20 pm train and have to wait an hour for the next one, so I saved 60 seconds by leaving the tracker running! I made the train by three minutes, by the way.

Mark Thurber had planned to skipper a race boat that night, but he had to cancel at the last minute, so I signed up for one of the class boats, skippered by Spinnaker Instructor Larry. The other crewman was Tony.

Larry coached us, while Larry and I traded off between sheets and tiller. Unfortunately, the informality of the race left even Larry without any idea of the course, so we were just following the back the whole time. We had started second, but somehow fell behind even before we got to the end of the channel.

The course turned out to be just to buoy “S” and back. That’s the white buoy that’s nearly invisible from more than a few boat lengths, so we wouldn’t have found it easily, even if we knew the course. In any case, we were just trying to gain experience.

I set the whisker pole and jibe preventer on the way back, but we didn’t actually need them. I had some trouble getting the pole out. Haven’t practiced for awhile.

Tony sailed into the slip with Larry’s guidance. I left them to wash down the boat so I could run for my train!

On Sunday, June 1, Steve M., Jason, and I took a nice long sail over smooth water, due to moderate winds with a flooding current.

We tacked quite a lot to the end of the channel, then sailed to the red barrel, then a few tacks up to the San Mateo Bridge. Sailing under the main span, we headed east past two bridge piers, then turned down to go back under the bridge.

From there, we sailed with only one jibe back into the channel and to the slip, arriving back around 5:30 p.m.