Collection of regattas in the SF Bay Area and down to Southern California. Henry won the Summer BAYS trophy for the second year in a row and the first with SFYC rather than EYC. Simon raced opti's and 420's. He qualified for the Bemis finals in San Diego and got 15th down there. He was also "honorably discharged" from optimist sailing following WCC's down at Alamitos Bay Yacht Club.
I was out there 45 minutes early to catch the shuttle fly over the East Bay, but luckily picked a pretty good spot on the Alameda-BFI bridge.
There was a group of school children there first but unfortunately their time ran out before it arrived. By the time it did show up at 10:10... I was the only one on the bridge.
America's Cup 34 has already started. Remember those two zippy Oracle catamarans cruising the bay this summer? Teams Spithill and Coutts (my kids love to say koootz) have already raced at World Series events in Cascais, Portugal and Plymouth, England - which just concluded. Next up is San Diego in early November.
We've been watching Live From Europe with our morning oatmeal via youtube.com/americascup. Once you start to "get" it... it really gets entertaining. It's all about teamwork and technology! They are working very hard to appeal to a wider tv audience that knows little about sailing with the assistance of precision GPS, onboard cameras, helicopters, and computer graphics by Stan Honey, the same guy who brought us the 10 yard line in football, the hockey halo, NASCAR's RACEf/x, and baseball's PITCHf/x, among other triumphs.
We watched fleet races, where all 9 teams compete at the same time, and match races where they face off in duals to win the bracket. So far in the total standings, Emirates Team New Zealand is in 1st place followed by Oracle-Spithill (Spithill is the captain), Oracle-Coutts (koootz!) in 3rd, Sweden's Artemis Racing, and Team Korea in 5th. Watching Team Korea blossom in the final days of Plymouth was the biggest thrill at our house. Maybe we are just real keen on the white tiger graphics, but it was huge fun watching them emerge.
Speaking of civilized, we recently visited Vancouver, British Columbia for a combo business/pleasure trip. We navigated the city for 5 full days mostly by foot, bicycle, and public transit (and the occasional taxi.) Compared to San Francisco, the weather sorta sucks (which says a lot if you know SF) but Vancouver makes San Francisco look ***archaic*** when it comes to transit. They really have it figured out.
