An Afternoon on the Bay: Sailing with Insperity Aboard the Team O'Neill

Written By Doug Erickson

Greg Kelly of Insperity hosted friends of Santa Cruz Works aboard the O'Neill Sea Odyssey catamaran on July 15 — a flawless summer sail of wind, wine, shearwaters, and the bay at its generous best.

There are days on Monterey Bay that you spend years trying to describe to people who weren't there, and Wednesday, July 15, was one of them. Greg Kelly of Insperity had invited a boatload of us aboard the Team O'Neill, the 65-foot catamaran that Jack O'Neill turned into a floating classroom, and the bay — which owes none of us anything — decided to show off.

We slid out of the harbor mouth into warm, unfiltered sunshine, the kind that makes you forget every fog-smothered June afternoon you've ever endured on this coast. The breeze filled in at a steady eighteen knots, honest wind, enough to lean the big cat forward and put a hiss in the water running past the hulls. Somebody handed me a glass of Soquel Vineyards wine, and I stood at the rail trying to decide which was better company: the pinot or the horizon.

Then the bay got busy. The Wednesday Night Sailboat races came pouring out around us, spinnakers blooming like a regatta of tropical flowers, boats crossing our bow and stern in that choreographed near-chaos that only sailors find relaxing. And beyond the racers, the water itself was alive — vast, shifting shoals of anchovies dimpling the surface, herded and harried by what seemed like billions of sooty shearwaters. The birds moved in dark rivers across the sky, wheeling and diving in numbers that made you understand, viscerally, why the Ohlone and the whalers and the wetsuit inventors all decided this particular corner of the Pacific was worth staying for. It was the food web performing in the open, no admission charged.

Jack O'Neill believed that if you put people on the water, the ocean would do the rest of the teaching. The Sea Odyssey has proven him right with tens of thousands of fourth-through-sixth graders over three decades. On July 15, it proved him right with a boat full of adults who mostly stopped talking about work somewhere off Pleasure Point and just watched.

Our deep thanks to Greg Kelly and Insperity for making the afternoon possible. Insperity (insperity.com) helps small and mid-sized businesses do the hard, unglamorous work that keeps companies afloat: full-service HR, payroll administration, employee benefits, workers' compensation, compliance, and talent management, all delivered through their professional employer organization model so founders can focus on building rather than paperwork. For growing companies in our community, they are, fittingly, good crew — the people handling the rigging so you can keep your eyes on the horizon.

Fair winds, and see you on the bay.

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