But things got confused, and we ended up with two crews in two separate boats. I was in Fran's boat that's docked in Alameda—a 30' Hunter that was a great boat—along with Fran, Sandi, Dave, Michael, and Fran's friend Russell. Russell has at least a million years of experience sailing all over the world and knows everything there is to know about the bay, the Blue Angels, and just about anything else you might want to ask!We sailed out of Fran's slip right
on time at 10:30am and tooled around the bay for a couple of hours, trying to meet up with the SF boat our friends were on at Blossom Rock. After much ado, we did find them, but they didn't seem to want to sail in formation with us. So we went out the Golden Gate and back, up toward Angel Island, and finally settled in near Alcatraz to watch the show... along with thousands of other boats!The Blue Angels show was impressive, as always, and a good time was had by all. Please keep in mind that I was on a moving boat while shooting this video!
Immediately after
the show, there was a mass exodus like leaving a concert at Shoreline! And Russell decided that was the perfect moment for us the fly the shoot! Oh my... Without giving us novices any instruction beforehand, he just took the spinnaker up on deck and starting rigging it and shouting instructions at us... and not the clearest instructions, I might add. Sandi and I had no experience flying a spinnaker, but we did our best and got it raised. Dave was ably driving the boat, even though he had no experience with it either. Once the shoot was up, we were flying on a beam reach, hitting 8+ knots consistently with bursts of up to 10 knots. 
It was a great ride!Back at the slip, it didn't take much to button up the boat, since Fran's living on it part-time and was planning to take it out the next day. So we headed up to the Pier 29 restaurant for a quick drink and chat before heading home.
Check out my Picasa web album for more still shots.
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