On Wednesday, May 28, Mark Thurber invited me to join his boat for the weekly Wednesday evening “beer can” race at Spinnaker. I handled the jib sheets while another of Mark’s friends handled the main sheet, and two more mostly sat on the rail, ducking under the boom with each tack.

But we could have done the whole race with only two tacks! The wind was strong and out of just the right direction to sail all the way to the red barrel without a tack, then up to the nearly invisible buoy “S” on one reach, then a tack to head back to the channel and to the dock without another tack.

But we weren’t sure where “S” was, so we ended up making about four extra tacks to get around it.

Mark sailed into the slip. Very nice.