PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM 105 Parke and MeeSun named the restaurant Hurrica after Mark’s boat, a 1920s wooden sailing yacht that cameoed in The Great Gatsby movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The restaurant is full of nautical details, with seahorse door handles, copper wire fish that seem to swim about the ceiling and huge sliding doors to let in the Bay breeze. Redwood tables pay tribute to the city’s namesake and intricate woodwork on the ceiling resembles the butterfly hatches on Mark’s boat. “It’s just a big Hurrica!” Mark grins. But the real showstopper? A 1,200-gallon aquarium with more than 100 pulsing moon jellyfish that separates the dining room from the bar. It’s the largest privately-owned jellyfish tank in North America. “I make the restaurant give me their shells. It’s called cultch,” Mark says as he hikes the stairs from the dining room to The Club at Westpoint’s lounge. “Oysters want to adhere to old shells. So we’re spreading the shells on the rocks around here to promote more oysters.” He explains that back in the days of industrial salt production, the species had died out. But now, “it’s so clean in the harbor, the native oysters have come back.” It’s a lifegiving cycle, since these mollusks can filter up to 50 gallons of water per day, a sort of natural purification system. Stepping out onto the yacht club’s balcony, Mark looks contentedly out at the forest of masts bobbing in the harbor. “There’s nothing like it.” set sail westpointharbor.com THE HISTORY OF THE HURRICA V This 1924 wooden sailing yacht has seen some things. After being requisitioned by the Australian Navy as a patrol vessel during World War II, it was outfitted with machine guns, armed with depth charges and equipped with a powerful Perkins diesel engine. It was later restored and refitted for civilian use. Its many owners used it for leisure sailing, entertaining and the liveaboard life. It’s run aground, hit a reef, and weathered a cyclone. It even appeared in The Great Gatsby starring Leonardo DiCaprio. This year, Hurrica V turned 100. MASTERING THE MARINA BOTTOM (left): Mark emerges from below deck on the Hurrica V.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTcxMjMwNg==