Way-back time machines

Christopher Lewis, a grand-prix navigator more accustomed to high-performance machines, revels in the experience of racing a legendary way-back time machine.

The warning gun fires, and the prestart dance begins in the Classics fleet at the Rolex Big Boat Series hosted by San Francisco’s St. Francis YC. We’ve got 19 knots of wind already, and it’s still early. It will blow. I can feel the building sea breeze that has whipped San Francisco Bay into frenzied whitecaps nearly every summer day for as long as I can remember.

For this regatta, I’m not in my usual position as navigator. Today, I’m the tactician. That’s because Mayan is special, and I find that it gives me insight into the expectations of the great tacticians I normally sail with on other grand-prix programs. “Time to burn to the boat?” I ask Lance Berc, a retired Silicon Valley technologist with an Albert Einstein hairstyle. – Full story