San Francisco was our first stop in the land of plenty. Mark and I hadn't been to this city in over a decade and reminisced about meeting here 20 years ago at one of the annual ASMS mass spectrometry conferences. Siraj took credit for bringing us together at his Merck Isotopes hospitality suite, although the details are a bit fuzzy. Twenty years was ages ago!
We visited Charlie and Lizz in their Tiburon summer apartment for a Kaya/Reach reunion sans boats.
It is a dynamic time for them as Charlie is coaching the Red Bull Youth America's Cup USA Team and Lizz is managing base operations.
We stayed in their gorgeous flat overlooking the bay and regularly saw the AC72 boats out practicing each day. I must have taken dozens of pictures of this view at various times to capture the days' progression from foggy morning to sunny afternoon to low-light dusk with boats of all shapes and sizes.
It was a great reunion! We shadowed our friends throughout the week, not only doing yoga and taking hikes, but also attending fundraisers and yacht club presentations. It was exciting to observe the RBYAC USA team of young men in action, learning the ropes of teamwork and professionalism on top of high performance sailing.
Lizz's birthday was during our visit, so we took a limo to Sonoma valley for some wine-tasting in-style!
It was an absolutely perfect day and incredibly picturesque with vines heavy with grapes.
We visited about seven vineyards and got even happier as the day progressed! Good thing we hired a limo for the day.
A highlight of our tour was meeting Aussie Chris Loxton at his vineyard. He gave us a personal wine-tasting and signed a bottle for Lizz's birthday.
Turns out Chris retired from a similar field to us in physics SIMS analysis and used to make one of Mark's favorite "winter" wines from Wellington vineyards, Noir-de Noir. We got a kick out of his wine-making lab!
Mark got to go sailing with Charlie and his team on the bay three of the days, twice on the Extreme 40 Shadow. He even got took the tiller for one leg, sailing a personal first of around 16 kts boat speed upwind. The owner graciously offered the use of Shadow to the RBYAC USA team as a practice boat before the teams got to use the AC45's on August 12th.
Mark also went for another ride with Charlie who was helming the Mod70 trimaran Orion, one of the fastest sailboats in the world.
They cruised around the bay averaging in the low 30kt range, accelerating on foil.
Mark was perched way up high in one of the amas and looked down on smaller boats 30 ft below as they whizzed past!
We even got to see the first day of the Louis Vuitton Cup between teams Luna Rossa and Artemis downtown by Pier 23. The America's Cup Park had fantastic public access, restaurants and front-row views of the finish ~ more pictures to follow!
Muchisimo gracias, amigos... Looking forward to the next reunion!
