Sara and I went down to the St. Francis Yacht Club for the Pacific Cup final start - the big boats! StFYC is very impressive. We went up to the observation deck and watched the 50-70 footers tack back and forth before the start.
I scootered down to the St. Francis Yacht Club on the San Francisco Bay, CA at lunch to catch the 2nd double-handed start of the Pacific Cup. This start is the small ULDB boats, Moore 24s, Olsons, and Dylan's custom Dogpatch 26 "Moonshine".
Sara and I watched the fireworks over Swimmer's Cove in San Francisco. It was very foggy and totally surreal to have the night sky glowing different colours.
John, Dan, Josh and I sailed John's FT10 "Savage Beauty" from San Francisco Bay to Half-Moon Bay in the YRA's annual race. This is typically a wild downwind ride in the 15-25+knots of wind that blows from the north down the coast. Of course, this year we had shifty 5-10knot winds from the south. HMB is south of SF. Go figure.
Captain John invited Sara and I to join him and the rest of his crew for a friday-night beer can race aboard his Flying Tiger 10m, sailed from South Beach Marina just south of the Bay Bridge in SF. The FT10 is a fairly new ultralight sailing boat with extendable sprit, giant asymmetric spinnaker, pre-bent mast with swept spreaders, and all kinds of other go-fast technology.
Chris and Scott invited me to join them onboard Chris' Farrier F-27 for race 3 of the interclub inside-the-bay race sponsored by Oakland Yacht Club. Six different fleets raced, each with an average of six or seven boats, on a course that was 13.7nm for the slower boats and 18.1nm for the faster boats. We were one of the faster boats.
My friend Monilee is a world-class mountain biker. I'm not. Her husband Fraser has done epic races like Trans-Rockies and Trans-Alps. I haven't been to the gym in more than three months. The two of them own six bikes, have their garage fully setup for long training rides, and are totally committed to bike racing. My bike has been in storage the last 18 months.
Dylan and Roshie invited Sara and me to join them for the historic Vallejo Season Opener race on their ultralight custom Dogpatch 26, "Moonshine". We love the Vallejo race - it was the first race we sailed on Velella, our much-beloved Ericson 27.
Ben and Allison, Joe and Sarah, Amy, and Sara and I took off for a day trip to Naples. We spent the morning exploring the ancient city of Pompei, covered in hot volcanic ash thousands of years ago and perfectly preserved until just recently.
During the first two weeks in Italy I slowly devoured a great book called "Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter's".