There's something slightly surreal about sitting on the deck of the schooner America - after which the America's Cup was named - on a windy day in San Francisco Bay.
It was 162 years to the day from the first America's Cup race when we pulled out of the dock for a quick sail round the Bay.
Two things fast became apparent. First, the wind was blowing a bit hard, a decent 25 knots maybe, for the heavily laden schooner (a replica) to show its 160-year-old paces. The original America was laid to rest more than 70 years ago, a victim of decay, a snowstorm and a fire.
Second, you can see what the sailors in the 34th America's Cup have to deal with - the wind is wild and woolly in the afternoons, there are nasty passages of water where wind and tide are at loggerheads and it's cold. That water - which acted as an efficient escape-proof valve for the prisoners of Alcatraz - is murky and sucks the life out of most people quickly; one reason why the chase boats stay so close in the races.
A 101-foot, 100-tonne wooden racing yacht, the original America revolutionised sailing. Up until it was built for a trip to the Isle of Wight in 1851 to take on the might of British shipbuilding, most yachts had a "cod's head" and a "mackerel's tail" - blunt bows and a sleek tail, like a fish.
