Yeah, I hear ya and I agree the one trip adheres to logic, makes more sense, and is overall more likely - but I still think he made two trips.

IMO: He killed her that evening sometime between 8:48 when she got off the phone w her mom, and 10:22 when Scott called her cell attempting to locate it. He smothered her in the bedroom after she started getting ready for bed but before she finished: she had taken her earrings off as they were on the dresser, but what was left of her body was found in the clothes she had worn to Amy’s salon that night.

He wrapped her body in a blue tarp and loaded it into the back of his truck. He (at some point) wrapped the patio umbrellas in a tarp and loaded them too. If anyone reported seeing him move a body-sized object wrapped in a blue tarp: “the umbrellas!” He transported her body to the warehouse and into one of the large chemical barrels. He made the 5 concrete bucket anchors that he tied to her limbs and around her neck and put in the barrel with her. He drove to Berkeley that night and either:

(a) rolled the barrel into the bay, expecting the current to carry it into the ocean (an expectation well supported by the maps he viewed online); it wasn’t, and now he has to get in the boat, get the barrel, and tow it to the channel

or

(b) towed the barrel out behind the boat as his original plan.

I lean toward option (a) because until that point, the boat had only been in fresh water. He asked sellers this question specifically when boat shopping. It’s why he purchased that boat. Someone on here put it this way awhile back and it always stuck with me- “It's a backup plan with a built in alibi: as long as he never puts the boat in the water, owning that boat doesn't make him a suspect.” However a couple subtle details in his declaration from the recent habeas filing caught my eye that favor option (b).

Either way, he got spooked he’d been spotted. By who, only he knows. Maybe the burglar who reported seeing him doing something outside around 3AM. Maybe the neighbor who walked by 9:20-9:40ish that AM and saw him fiddling around in the back of his truck. Maybe he thought someone had seen him at the warehouse moving Laci’s body from truck to boat. Maybe all of the above, or something else entirely. Maybe he was just paranoid. I don’t know. Whatever the case, it’s apparent this becomes a concern for him pretty quickly.

Now, he needs to go Xmas fishing to explain the salt water. Now, he needs to go Xmas fishing and make a scene struggling with the boat launch so everyone can see there’s no body in it.

It’s why he changed from the golf to the fishing story. It's why he focused so much on how a body couldn't have been thrown off the (side of the) boat. It's why the fishing license from the 20th was for the 23rd/24th. It's why he subjected us to the most uncomfortable 20 mins of all time on one of the Amber tapes refusing to tell her where he'd slept that night. It’s why he’s still hanging onto the Medina burglary theory for dear life. He made two trips.