Night Boating II

Two weeks after explaining why we haven't been out at night in the delta... We were out at night on the delta.

We'd planned to take a long weekend last weekend to anchor out with some sailor friends... Then spent Friday at a funeral instead of anchored out. Took the runabout out to visit our friends Saturday and found out they were headed to our marina for the night so we made plans for the ten of us to take our ski boat and one other ski boat to dinner that night. Departure time was pushed back as it took them awhile to get settled in and cleaned up but the timing still worked out to get home before dark... Except we had to wait about an hour and a half for a table for ten at Giusti's in Walnut Grove. Not too shocking to have to wait for a big group... The food was fantastic...

So it was dark when we left to come home. Very dark. No moon dark.

There are certain running lights required at night and one of our lights, the 360 degree white light at the stern, does not work. We'd brought a suction cup mount battery powered one from our dinghy (that we've had for two years with no occasion to use) "just in case". The other boat had a spot light and we had a chart plotter with depth sounder. They went first with their light and we started off back down the river, backtracking the way we'd come.

For some reason the stern light decide to make a swim for it shortly after we left. Luckily someone noticed right away. It was actually pretty cool, not only did in float but it floated with the light pointed up. We went back and easily retrieved it. We had a small piece of line we tied to it to tether it to the boat after the light over board drill. The boat we were following noticed we'd turned around and waited for us.

A short time later we were passed by two boats traveling the same direction at what sure seemed like high speed. It was really hard to see their wakes to take them at a good angle. We were all in our life vests for safety and weren't scared, it was more weird to see their lights woosh by.

We then had an uneventful stretch where we spent time admiring the stars and noticing how the dippers were visible from completely different sides of the boat as we wound down the slough. We were able to maintain a consistent distance from the other boat by listening to their music. They have huge speakers on their wakeboard "tower" and when the music got louder we knew they'd slowed down so we would too.

Once we got close to willow berm we saw the lights of another boat headed our way. As I mentioned, we have a chartplotter. The boat we were following was over a shallow spot in the middle of the river so we were hanging to the left a bit. The other boat went right between us. It was probably at least a 30' boat, moving at a good clip. In my opinion, too fast for the conditions (I.e. PITCH DARK!!!).

We dropped off our passengers shortly after and were very happy to be back at our slip safely after an exciting trip home. The return took about twice as long as the outbound trip as we were feeling our way along in the dark. We slept pretty well after a long day on the water!