Day 2 - Races # 3 & #4 - Knox Buoy

It was a beautiful morning... I played with my daughter, changed her diaper, sipped a cup of coffee, watched a little ESPN... I ordered the sandwiches from the local Safeway and picked them up early. I even had time to fiddle around the boat, eat breakfast, put on sunblock, take off the tool box and extra unnecessaries.
Then my morning started to suck. I call my crew at 10 because it was time to leave the dock and I wanted to see how close he was to see if we should get the sails ready without him he acts like he has no idea it's a race day. I hang up and turn to my other crew and say, "It's just us, let's go."
He starts making phone calls and his brother was his 3rd option, but was in the area and available. So, I ask him to make like the kid in the movie The Incredibles and go get him (the kid in the movie has like super speed super powers if you haven't seen the movie). While he was gone I rigged the boat so all they had to do was walk on and cast off. The sails were up as they were walking from their car. It was 10:35 and everyone was long gone. The wind had just come up from the north west and it was flooding so we pointed high and made our way over to the Knox buoy area... luckily, we were the 4th start.

Meet my muppets. Will and his brother Tucker. Great guys, too. They put up with my antics and intensity today. They wanted to win just as bad as me and felt bad they didn't know what to do.
Will is actually very good crew. He's done time on J-105's and Express 27's and many other boats, so he knows what's up.
Tucker just had hand surgery and it was forecast to blow 20-25... yikes.
The usual suspects were in attendance, Team Wilson with Kate Funk.
Richard and Al... no 3rd.

Chris Herrmann, Mike Cole and new guy Chris... didn't get the last name and some random piece of string stuck on the lens.
USA 108
Mike Goebel and Co.
That rouge piece of string again.
Bill DuMullin woke up in time for the first race.

Peter Jeal and Suzi Parker... they're mad at me right now. Some silly trifle at the first start. We might be going to protest room, I hope.
Randy Hietter on Scout - USA 115
Brock DeLappe looking sharp.
There were others... Tom Reed jr. on USA 111 and Werner Stein with Chad Schwartz on USA 103. 74, 76, 104, 105 and 114 were notably absent. Danielle Dignan is only sailing 116 on the Wednesdays and the Woodies.

First race we were 2nd to the windward mark had a poor leeward rounding and fell to 5th, very disappointing. We worked out the crew teamwork thing and did much better after that. Peter won and Wilson was 2nd... I think. In the 2nd race we were 6th to the windward rounding, pulled into 3rd by the leeward rounding, moved up to 2nd before the next windward mark then actually passed Wilson downwind... I'm still trippin' that we did that. Then, damn it, we were covering the fleet along the shore of Angel Island and we all sailed into a hole. The heat from the island creates this weird effect when it heats up. The wind rises up just before it hits the land creating a hole. I know it does this, I talked about it on the way over to the races, I saw it getting lighter, but I went into it anyway. All I could think was cover, cover, cover. Wilson pulled out of it better and beat us to the line by a third of a boat length. Ok, not bad really. The boat is fast and the tuning we did on Wednesday was spot on, we're fast on both tacks now and downwind. We'll be OK for the rest of the season.

After the races a bunch of us stopped at the GGYC and had some drinks and talked about the days racing. All part of the fun of racing Folkboats on San Francisco Bay. This is the view from the bathroom of the GGYC in case you can't quite place the angle.