Last week we had the First BitMover Regatta. On Tuesday, BitMover rented a bunch of sailboats, and a group of employees raced across the San Francisco Bay. It was my first time on a sailboat, and I had an excellent time. I had been on a Yacht before, deep sea fishing, but sailboats are an entirely different experience. Now I understand why Evi is sailing across the world. Sailing is too cool.

At around noon, we drove to Sausalito, where the sailboats were waiting for us in the dock. We divided in 3-person teams, and each team got a sailboat and a skipper. The skipper’s role was giving us directions and basically taking care of us since not many

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people had sailed before. At the dock, we found our sailboat, a 42-foot Bēnēteau 423. The Bēnēteau 423 was one of the top 10 sailboats of 2003 according to Sail Magazine, and it’s price is around $165,000. Not bad at all! Upon boarding the sailboat, we met Stan, our skipper, who had been in the Coast Guard for 20 years before becoming a sailing instructor for the Modern Sailing Academy in Sausalito. He explained all the boat terminology (port is left, starboard is right when facing the ship’s front, or rather, the bow). And taught us how to work the sails. We used the motor to get out of the docks, hung around the start line until the race started, and set sail towards San Francisco.

Stan asked for a volunteer to take the helm (steering wheel) and I immediately stepped forward (knowing that working the helm would be easier than pulling all the

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ropes). Since I had never been in a sailboat, I didn’t expect it to lean that much. It’s a little scary at first, but I was assured by Stan that they don’t tip over under normal conditions (i.e. not in a hurricane). Driving that thing was fun, but it required a lot of attention. Basically if you let your attention drift for 10 seconds, you would slightly change course and lose the lift. If you lose the lift often enough, your skipper can order a Keelhauling, which I’ve been told is not pleasant. I must have done allright because we were going at about 3 knots towards San Francisco.

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It took us a while to find the buoy where we were supposed to turn, but after a while, we found it and headed towards the bay bridge. We were going with the wind, which is really cool because you can go really, really fast. The course took us around Alcatraz, the famous prison where Al Capone was an inmate.

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Seeing Alcatraz up close was quite a thrill. I have wanted to go to Alcatraz since 1994, when I first visited San Francisco, but because of various reasons, I have never taken a tour of “The Rock”. After we went around Alcatraz, we headed back towards Sausalito, and the finish line. During that last segment, even though we were going more or less against the wind, we did a pretty good time. We won the race, crossing the finish line 7 minutes before the next sailboat.

We didn’t have to return the boat until 5:00 pm, and we crossed the finish line at around 4:00 pm. What could we do in an hour? Well, that wasn’t a hard decision, we convinced our skipper to take us to the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge. We set sail and managed to go

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to the other side. It was amazing being under the bridge. We got a little taste of the ocean too, with a slightly rougher sea than what the bay had been. After a quick turn, we got back to the dock, returned the sailboat and called it a day.

Once we were in the land again, we were tired and hungry. We headed to the Buckeye Roadhouse in Mill Valley for dinner, and what a dinner we had! If you ever go to the Buckeye, try the Ahi tuna appetizer. It’s unbelievably good.

After this first taste of sailing, I’m left wanting to learn how to sail. Who knows, maybe when I retire, I’ll buy a sailboat and follow Evi’s course around the World.