Night Boating

Matt and I love boating at night. Some of our best memories are night time runs in the bay or offshore. However we don't boat at night in the delta and the photo illustrates why. When we took the photo last weekend, this tree was behind B&W resort and marina. Today it was about a quarter mile downstream. Not something you want to run into in the dark. Maybe we'll reach a point where we're comfortable running at night with moving obstacles like this but for now, no.

Devil's Island

We're on another Ox Bow cruise. This weekend we are at "Devil's Island," a private island at the juncture of white slough and little connection slough. They have a very nice dock and some open air covered decks with barbecues. No power or running water. We just enjoyed a delightful dinner with the club- a bring your own main dish affair with potluck sides and desserts. We are now enjoying a wonderful cool evening after a rather warm day.

SNAFU

A very large sailboat was anchored in front and to the right of our group on Wednesday. He only had a bow anchor out so was swinging with the current. Our group of fifteen boats had bow and stern anchors so we were all fairly stationary. Thursday afternoon two large power boats showed up and rafted one on each side if the sailboat. No additional anchors were put out. We were somewhat concerned as they weren't all that far from our group.

The wind came up over night and some of our guys started an anchor watch. Good thing they did because about 1 am that group of three boats started sliding backwards in front of our raft up. Everyone in our group was quickly awoken and we all started honking and trying to hail the three. They stopped moving (their anchor hooked on the anchor lines of the two boats to our right) and shortly after we finally saw the crews come up. Two per boat.

Since neither powerboat had an anchor out they quickly freed themselves and disappeared in a cloud of diesel exhaust, leaving the two on the sailboat to try and disengage their anchor from our group. I hope you can see in the pictures- iPhones aren't really meant for night photos! Our group had a few spotlights on them. They finally got free and with a backwards yell of "champagne's on us tomorrow" they were gone. They didn't show up with the champagne today either!!

This led to SNAFU part two this morning when we tried to leave. All the folks from the left end of the raft up raised anchor and left but we were concerned our line was under that of the two boats to our right. I'll have to write that up from my computer as my hand is tired from typing with one finger on the phone!! There was a tangled mess oh three anchors but luckily we were clear of it.

Fireworks

iPhone photos really can't do this 30 min show justice!! Thank you Hiltons!!! We were nervous about being out in the middle of things at Mandeville but it's been great and better than three river reach last year which had lots of bugs and very loud young people. This place was mellow in comparison. We were in the front row right behind the barge with the Ox Bow Yacht Club. Awesome.

Pre Fireworks

The fireworks haven't even started yet and this is AWESOME.

Discovery Bay

We took Hinky Dink down to Disco Bay for lunch yesterday. We've seen the plane out many times. There are a couple shots from our return trip.

Can you spot us in the raft up photo?

Sunrise is from this morning and the guy with the parachute contraption was flying around WAY too early this morning. It sounded like a weed whacker.

The fireworks barge is setting up right in front of us.

Mandeville

Anchored out for the fireworks Thursday.