Touched by an Angel

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to go on a team offsite sailing in the Bay and hanging out at Angel Island. It was such a relaxing pause from the daily grind of things to do at work and the first time I've been on a sailboat or visited Angel Island.

The boat itself was pretty neat and I never realized all the complexity involved in sailing, raising and moving the sails around and lining up properly with the wind before doing any of those things. It was certainly a good thing that we could just sit around and watch the crew work it. Here's a pic of the boat:



It was nice to have a combined offsite with a couple of teams so we could grab a bigger boat and meet more people. Here are some of the folks that I work with:



It was fairly cold, windy, and foggy in the morning, so it wasn't lining up to be a nice day. I only brought a windbreaker so was fairly freezing. On the way out, we passed by a couple huge ships that might've been lingering around since Fleet Week was in SF the previous weekend:



Nevertheless, we eventually got there and Angel Island was pretty nice, although somewhat deserted at this time of the year on a weekday:



It was going to take a while to fire up the barbeque, so a group of us decided to go on a short hike to stay warm and to work up an appetite for lunch. It was a fairly tame trail, but a pretty nice view of Marin when we got to a vista point. The sun had also started to break through, so it was getting nice:



After a scrumptuous lunch of bbq chicken and hot links, we lounged around the area, tossing a frisbee and generally just relaxing. When it was time to head back, it was nearly as cold as on the way in and we took a slight detour to swing by a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was still a little foggy out there and it was crazy to see these little sailboats out there against the strong winds:



On the way back in, we got a reasonably nice view of the city skyline which was hidden on the way out:



The pier at which we docked was pretty close to the Bay Bridge, so we got to go under it both ways:



All in all, a fun trip. It's nice to have the opportunity to do something like that and it's pretty amazing how nice the Bay Area can be. This of course also means that there's more work to do this week in a smaller amount of time so it's time to get cracking!