Sunday, November 30, 2014

Headed Home in the Rain

Good day to have a lower helm. We enjoyed a wonderful long weekend at Devil's Isle. Just us and a mouse (on the docks).





Saturday, November 8, 2014

Monday, July 21, 2014

Happy Harbor

We were at the boat this past weekend and heard there'd been a fire at Happy Harbor, one of the restaurants on the delta loop. Drove by to see for ourselves then googled the fire and found the restaurant had been closed for at least a few weeks before the fire occurred.  I'm not sure if the fire started in the restaurant space downstairs or the living quarters upstairs. The resident if the living quarters got out but her two dogs did not. :(. Not sure what the future holds for the building, since the restaurant had shut down before the fire. Very sad. 

Sunday, June 1, 2014

Quiet Weekend



After the crazy weekend last weekend, this weekend is calm and quiet. We came to DI again, one of four boats here. 




Thursday, May 29, 2014

Memorial Day Weekend

We had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend at Devil's Isle. We were able to get up to the delta early enough Friday to take the boat to the island that evening. 

We headed down the Mokelumne to the San Joaquin and at the juncture of the two, we noticed a jet ski sitting idle in the San Joaquin, with no rider in sight. We started scanning with the binoculars and noticed someone ~80 yards from the jet ski. We went over and offered help, which he accepted. He was in a life jacket and was ok to climb onto our boat himself. He said he was thrown off and had tried swimming to the ski but was not able to with the restrictive life jacket. His ski was in too shallow water for us to take him to it so we took him to the gas dock of a nearby marina. He was able to get a fisherman there to give him a ride and last we saw of him, he was back underway on his jet ski. He said his buddy he was jet skiing with didn't even see him fall off and apparently hadn't noticed the stranded man was no longer with him. Note to anyone reading this, if you are buddied up with someone, you need to PAY ATTENTION to your buddy!  If you don't notice your buddy needs help, it defeats the purpose of buddying up! 

After that side track, we made it to Devil's Isle in time to throw some burger patties on the grill and socialize as the sun went down. 

Saturday we were able to hitch a dinghy ride over to Tower Park to pick up our ski boat. We came right back as we were in the darts tournament! It's been awhile since I've thrown a dart. It was fun but not something I'm good at!

Sunday we were expecting to hear from Joe and Carrie when they left Mountain View to head up to the delta. Instead we ended up seeing them ahead of us in their ski boat as we rode around in our ski boat!  Later in the afternoon we picked them up at B & W and brought them over to DI to spend the night on our boat. 

The next day they took our ski boat back to B & W and we headed back to Willow Berm on PG. We crossed paths with them again! It was neat to see the ski boat in action. 

Overall a great start to summer! 

Sunday, May 4, 2014

Herman and Helen's foreclosure auction?

After a busy Saturday with a memorial service for a long time sailing friend  who'd sailed to Hawaii with Matt in '08, followed by a trip to church for a confirmation then a post confirmation party in San Jose, we got to pineapple girl near midnight last night. We headed over to Tower Park this morning and were underway in the little boat around 10am. We hadn't been to Herman and Helen's for awhile and figured we'd see if they were open for breakfast. 

It didn't look too promising as we pulled up but we tied up behind the restaurant building anyway. There was a man fishing in the docks and he said "you know they're closed." After chatting with him for a bit we finally came to understand they weren't just closed, they were CLOSED. Apparently they've been foreclosed upon and the property is going up for foreclosure auction??? This is HORRIBLE news. Herman and Helens is a delta institution!! We will definitely be on alert for updates on this siutation. 

We ended up heading back to Rosa's at Tower Park for food and had lunch. They don't have a breakfast cook right now and are looking for one. After we ate we headed up the south fork of the Mokelumbe to Wimpys where we stopped in briefly to discuss plans for the Ox Bow small boat cruise in June. Then back to Tower Park where Jack commented we hadn't been gone long. Seemed like a full day to us!! 


On our way to wimpys we saw a horse walk down the bank into the water! Apparently he was thirsty?!? 

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Beautiful Day

It's beautiful out on the Mokelumne today. I believe the two boats behind us are also Ox Bow members on their way back from a fantastic cruise to Grindstone Joe's. 


Saturday, April 12, 2014

Underway!

Got the boat back last weekend after five or six (who's counting) weeks in the yard. We went straight from the yard to Devil's Isle for a work party. This weekend we're heading to Grindstone Joe's for fun with Ox Bow Yacht Club. I keep meaning to post pictures of the work we had done! Hopefully this week. Enjoy your weekend!  

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Into the Yard

We took PG to the yard today. We've given them quite a list and hope to have her back in a few weeks. Matt took her to Pittsburg single handed and I met him there in the car. It was such a beautiful day I hated to miss the boat ride but we're glad we didn't drive two cars up Friday night. Traffic was horrible. 

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Rainy Delta Weekend

We finally had another weekend at the boat after several weekends spent house hunting. Now that we're under contract we can get back to enjoying our weekends!  Ox Bow had a cruise out this weekend but we hadn't signed up since we didn't know what our plans would be, so we spent the weekend in our slip, listening to the pitter patter of rain on the metal shed roof. 

We also cleaned adhesive residue off one  side of Spirit. I'll have to take a photo as it's actually pretty amazing. We'd bought stick on patches to display the registration numbers. Unfortunately they didn't stick all that well and all the edges were peeled up. We finally got disgusted with them and peeled them completely off. And of course even though they didn't stick all that well, they left a big mess of adhesive residue! 

We weren't sure what to get the residue off with as we didn't want to harm the dinghy tubes. We ordered a new oar lock as we'd broken one quite some time ago. It came with a 1oz sample of some kind of "orange off" stuff and a little white scruby pad. I won't pretend it was "wipe on, wipe off"-we used the entire bottle and a bit of elbow grease- but it got every bit of residue off and the area we cleaned looks brand new. We'll definitely get more of the product to get the residue off the other side and clean the rest of the boat. Good stuff. 

Meanwhile I've researched the best way to apply the registration numbers and it looks like a stencil and a sharpie is the way to go! So once we have Spirit all cleaned up we'll use that method to reapply the numbers. We'll post photos of the process. Coming soon...

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Happy New Year!

I can't believe I've been so bad about blogging lately!  We've been on several fun trips since I last posted, including spending two nights after Thanskgiving at our favorite anchorage with my mom and dad aboard. They really enjoyed all the birds and the dinghy ride to Rosa's for lunch. 

More recently, we spent a few days at the end of December through New Year's Day at the Willow Berm guest dock (yards from our slip) with a group of Ox Bow YC cruisers. As always with Ox Bow cruise outs, there were good times, great people and, of course, plenty to eat. We even got a bacon delivery one morning. Steve Hand cooks up great bacon! 

Today we are kicking back watching NFL playoffs until time to head to Ox Bow marina for a membership meeting. Earlier the TV in the aft cabin about fell over from a wake from a passing boat. It felt like we were in an earthquake. I don't understand why people have such a hard time with the concept of a no wake zone. No harm done though, Matt leapt up and grabbed the TV. We lay that one down when underway since it's not secured- maybe it's time to secure it!!   

I hope your 2014 is off to a fabulous start!  Go Niners! :)