10/18, Tuesday. Sunny with a few clouds. Met at Jack London Square of Oakland. The waterfront looks quite nice. Just a block inland is wholesale and warehouse, so not very pretty any more. For a team event, a dozen of us were here to board a sailboat, cruising along San Francisco Bay.
The most interesting aspect is seeing the container ship and the cranes up close. They are huge. We also some some trash piles (including flattened cars) waiting to be shipped (to where?).
As far as sightseeing goes, we were not pointed to anything. Half of the passengers are local, so I knew when we went under Bay Bridge, where is SFO downtown, Golden Gate Bridge, and Alcatraz Island (quite a few ferries going there). The captain was mostly seen behind the wheel. Two crew members unfurled the sails and later packed them, as well as server us drinks and food which we brought along (so less people were walking around and the boat would suffer less impact). When asked, one guy told us about the wind condition (always predictable in summer when central valley heats up in mid day), and buoy colors (keep the red on on your right side when going upstream). There's a toilet, which you pump for the content to go down. Probably goes directly to the ocean (yuk!).
