First Weekend in the Delta

I must first admit how anxious I was about making this trip.  This would be the farthest we'd ever gone on this boat and I was apprehensive about something going wrong.  We have the unlimited towing plan from Boat US so we knew who we'd call if anything DID go wrong, but still... 

Our original plan was to break up the journey in Pittsburg and then finish with a short jaunt to the Delta the next morning.  As departure day neared, we were able to leave a day earlier than we originally planned and we decided we'd only go as far as Angel Island the first day, hang out there with some friends, then head on the next day, whether to Pittsburg or all the way, we weren't sure.

We got up bright and early and left CP for Angel Island at 7:30 AM.  We'd gotten everything all ready the night before, including emptying the holding tank and getting the dinghy motor off the dinghy onto the back of PGII (using our new dinghy motor lift and dinghy motor bracket).  As we left, some neighbors in a sail boat were patiently waiting for the tide to turn so they'd have enough water under their keel to get out of their slip.  Even in our shallower draft power boat, we kicked up a little mud as we left. 

We had a great ride up through the south bay and we got to Angel Island around 10.  The tide was turning and we were getting a good push towards the delta.  Conditions were so good that we decided to keep going. Why not?

We had an uneventful ride through San Pablo Bay, which can be choppy and nasty but we were early with the wind and current with us so it was smooth and we saw speeds as high as 9.5 knots (yes that is slow, but we are a trawler and that is making good time by our standards).  Partway along the Carquinez Strait we were passed by a large cargo ship.  We checked out the data on it in our AIS system and found it was heading to Pittsburg so we now had someone to follow so we'd know we were going the right way.  It is a pretty easy trip, though the actual turn to Pittsburg is a little tricky as it really doesn't look like the channel goes anywhere as you make the turn.  In fact, some idiot in a really nice power boat blew right by us, close to us, just as we were turning into the channel.  He was so close and going so fast that he rocked us pretty hard. This is EXTREMELY bad form to hit someone with your wake like that.  He looked over and gave us a smile and wave as he passed us.  He was obviously completely oblivious to what he had done to us and that he had just blown by the channel.  He saw us turn and quickly did a 180 to follow us down the channel...

I had written more but lost several paragraphs.  I will have to rewrite it later as I don't have time right now!!

Ok I am back now and hopefully can remember what I had written before and lost... so we had turned into the channel to Pittsburg (New York Slough) with the jerk who'd just passed us at high speed now behind us.  Well we both slowed down pretty quick as that container ship we'd been following now had two tugs on him and we weren't really sure what they were trying to do or where they were putting him.  The docks appeared to be off to the right but at the moment they were smack in the middle of the channel.  There appeared to be room to go around on either side but we weren't too keen to try it as we did not want to get in the way.  Our "friends" that had passed us before were impatient folks and they passed us again (slowly this time!) and approached the nearest tug.  They seemed to speak with the tug operator, then they turned around and passed the freighter on the other side.  We followed them around and were soon back to cruising speed.  At this point we had decided to continue on to our slip we had reserved at Delta Bay Marina in the Delta as it was still early so it didn't seem worthwhile to stay a night in Pittsburg.

At this point we saw some nice boats heading the other way, including this one, "Loafer", which friends on the Trawler Forum identified as a 1930 Stephens Trunk Cabin Cruiser.

Before long we under the Antioch bridge and could consider ourselves to be in the Delta.  I decided to "check in" on facebook.  It searched for nearby locations and came back with "no nearby locations" so I added the location "no nearby locations--welcome to the delta".  We had quite a while of quiet, calm cruising on the wide and smooth San Joaquin river.  there are channel markers as is a deep water channel that runs all the way to the port of Stockton and the edges can get shallow where the current dumps off silt, especially at the inside of curves.  Also there is vegetation growing from the bottom of floating along and it tends to be thicker around the edges, so best to stay in the channel.  The river and the channel curve and swerve and we were enjoying checking the charts and chartplotter for the marks and making sure of where we were and where we were going.

We passed a lot of interesting abandoned looking vessels, bizarre "encampments" up on in the tule on the islands and quite a few creative boat modification projects.  The delta is quite an interesting place. 

We finally got to our marina about 3:45 if I recall correctly.  We saw the white roofs of the boat sheds awhile before we got there.  We still had a big S turn in the river to get through before we were actually there.  The marina is right off the river, with tule islands between it and the fast water. 

We weren't 100% sure where to go around the tule islands but there were big signs for Delta Bay that seemed to be directing us between two so that is where we went through.  The depth sounder was going lower, lower, lower and I was getting very nervous.  (I was driving at this point).  We kept going and after seeing a pretty low number, maybe 5 feet I can't recall, the numbers started going back up.  I handed the controls over to Matt and started getting out fenders and docklines.

We'd been warned that there is a lot of current running through the marina so we were mentally prepared to be pushed sideways as we tried to dock.  As we got close to our slip we saw there was a Sea Doo parked in it.  Now when I hear Sea Doo I think Jet Ski.  This was no Jet Ski, but a small water ski boat with seating for four and a big tow arch.  Someone hopped off the boat in the next slip and moved the Sea Doo, then helped us dock.  We are SO glad he was there and he helped us.  The current really swept us and if he had not been there we'd probably be wrapped around the shed roof supports!  We were very relieved to have made it all the way in about 8 1/2 hours with no incidents!

We walked across the street to Spindrift Restaurant for dinner and had a decent meal for a good price (at least by Bay Area standards!!). I had the steak and lobster tail special for $19.95 and had half a steak to take home.  We ended up having it for lunch later. 

The next day, Scott and Kim came up on Tiki J.  They'd spent a night at Angel Island to break up the trip as they could not leave until late that day.  We got them tied up in the uncovered slip next to us.  Before they arrived we had taken the dinghy out and had breakfast at Korth's Pirates Lair and checked out Potato Slough.  There were a lot of boats out there and we talked to a really nice woman from Richmond Yacht Club who it sounded like was the ring leader of the group.  One of the people had a plane tied to the back of a boat.  She said he'd flown up from nearby Discovery Bay.

We went on another dinghy trip with Scott and Kim the next day.  Their dinghy goes faster than ours but they were towing their boys in a big inner tube type thing (with a bottom) so that evened things up a bit.  We decided to check out nearby Owl Harbor Marina.  There was a slough along the way where they could go fast and give the boys a fun ride.  The kids were hooting and hollering with big grins on their faces.  We were soon in the marina and had to slow down.  We knew the slough the marina was in was going to come to a dead end at a bridge but we weren't sure if we'd be able to come back down the other side of an island in the middle.  We came around the top of the island to see where we'd end up.  It was a quite, deserted section of slough with nobody else around, though it was alongside a road at the top of the berm.  The kids were yelling for Scott and Kim to go fast again so they did, but one of the boys had moved to the front of the tube and it started to submarine and fill with water.  That really got the kids screaming.  We pulled alongside and started scooping out water.  Scott tried to speed up again and the kids started yelling about the water again.  So at this point they pulled their dinghy next to the tube, got the kids into the dinghy and Kim stood up to try and dump the water out.  Unfortunately the tube filled with water outweighed her and she ended up executing a nice dive into the slough.  At this exact moment some guy was driving down the berm in his pick up and yelled "Heck Yeah! Heck Yeah!"  Kim resurfaced, laughing and smiling and was soon back on the dinghy.  We scooped out a bunch of water from the tube and then Scott dumped the rest.  Only the older boy was willing to get back in and he was soon being towed fast and had a big grin on his face.  

We had to go under a small bridge and were then back in a marina and had to slow down.  There were tons of people down on their boats, hanging out and enjoying the day.  There was a big group in the water swimming and some guys on this absolutely gigantic float.  They said it was from Costco and I think Scott is going to see if he can find one.  Once we were back at our boats we made lunch with that leftover steak and leftover shrimp from our barbecue the night before, then we got in the water with our floats and hung out off the back of the boat for a few hours.  It was incredible.  The water feels cold for about the first half a second, then it feels great.  you don't even need a towel when you get out, you aren't cold.

We were sad to leave Monday but we were so exhausted from all the sun and fun that it was just as well to get back to reality.  We left the boat there and got a ride back.  We will be back Friday!