Tomales Bay Adventures

9-3-12 - Spud Point Marina, Bodega Bay, CA - Day 63

 

Tomales Bay; the good and the bad, could have been this posts title.  First; where is Tomales Bay? Why would a person want to go to this place? I've been to a bar before, why are you so scared of this one?  Here's some basic information on the area if you really want to know: Tomales Bay information  For us, the reality is that we are not exactly sure when we will be back in the San Franciso Bay area, with a boat and with this much time to explore.  Therefore we ought to take this opportunity to check out some of the great places on the Northern California coast before we head South.  Tomales Bay also seems to hold a sense of allure among the sailing community of San Francisco.  It is this place that really isn't that far away, it's reported to be incredibly beautiful, with lots of things to do; but many if not all of the people we've talked to had never made it there.  This can be attributed to many factors of course.  Like ourselves time is the number one reason I believe.  Most people seem to think that the San Francisco to Tomales Bay and back trip should be done over about ten days or so.  It's not a long weekend sort of trip, more like a long week if not more.  This keeps a lot of people away.  Secondly is the notorious bar at the entrance.  If you would listen to some people there is a sea creature that lives there and it gobbles up unsuspecting boats just for the fun of it.  (a "bar" is not a place to get a beer, but rather a place where the ocean goes from really deep to really shallow in a short distance causing the incoming swells to increase in size and potentially break like they do on a beach)  Many people, us included until now, would hate nothing more than to take a week off work, spend three days getting to Tomales Bay only to find the waves breaking on the bar stopping their entrance to the sacred bay.  These were the reasons that had kept us away until now and probably the reasons that we were most likely the only non local and non trailered sailboat in the bay on a holiday weekend.  Fortunately for us time was not an issue so our logic was that if the sea creature was holding court at the entrance we would go to Spud Point Marina and at least say we tried.

As you can read previously, our trip into Tomales Bay originated at Drakes Bay with a 6:00 AM departure.  We had nice wind but with a schedule to keep we motor sailed most of the way.  If you read the guides and follow all the advice, you are supposed to cross the bar at high tide between the hours of 8:00 and 10:00 in the morning with a swell of no more than five feet.  The conditions for this were perfect on this day, but as mentioned it meant we had to leave Drakes at 6:00 AM and not do less than 5 knots the entire twenty five mile trip.  Ultimately we mad it to the entrance on time, we had a small swell, we called the locals for an update on the conditions at the bar and for some reason we were still nervous.  We looked thru the binoculars to check for breakers and re-read the guides and information we had, and as we inched closer and closer to our first encounter with menacing breaking waves, I looked down at the chartplotter and realized we were already past the bar and life was good.  The reality is there is a very real danger and a very specific route you should take when entering the bay, but that is a discussion you can send me an e-mail about for the specifics as a discussion of passing bla bla bla green #3 


yes there actually is a green #3 buoy

can buoy to starboard with seven feet of water and within fifty feet of the shore etc, etc will be mind numbing for anyone who doesn't intend to go to Tomales Bay.  Either way our entrance was thankfully uneventfully.  On a technical note I will say we used the MeHaffy's cruising guide and notes from the travel log of Libations Too ( http://rollinscs.com/boatpages/cruisinglogpage6.htm ) as our basis for our route and decisions.  Their advice was all good and sound.

Now on to why we would go to all this work and take these risks.  Tomales was a beautiful place.  The first place we dropped our anchor at White Gulch, I spent a few hours sitting in the cockpit watching a herd of tule elk graze on the hill side, various shore birds were flying around eating out of the newly exposed low tide areas and generally it was exactly what everyone says about the area.  Ultimately, there was a lot of wind being funneled thru the canyon at White Gulch so we moved to an inlet just North of Sacramento Landing on the West shore of the bay, just off of a small beach that I am convinced was put there just for us. 


AW at anchor with my beach on the left

It was in this place we spent five nights anchored.  Four of them were great and one was not so good. 

Tomales lived up to all the hype.  We launched the dinghy and spend around the bay to different locations,  thinking it was easier than moving the big boat and re-anchoring multiple times, checking out the attractions.  We really didn't want to give up our private beach.  One day we went North and beached the dinghy where we set off on a long hike / walk that turned our to be more walking along the road than hiking, but none the less was a great way to see the peninsula. The entire peninsula was at one time used as a dairy ranch that produced butter, so there was some fun things for Elizabeth to see at the turn of the century dairy farm at the end of our walk.  Then down to McClure's beach on the Pacific side of the peninsula before the long walk back to the dinghy.  Thankfully we ran into some people watching a herd of the tule elk on the road and we talked to them for a while.  We took off on our walk and soon they came up behind us and offer a ride back to our trail.  I guess we appeared to be trust worthy!  We got back to the trail and a herd of cows had blocked our gate, so as they scattered we hopped the fence and headed on our way. 

Dinghying around Tomales

View of the Pacific towards Pt. Reyes

 

White Gulch - our 1st anchorage

McClures Beach on the Pacific



McClure's Beach

 

We spent a day at Hearts Desire Beach, then over to the "town" of Marshall for fresh oysters and clam chowder.  Apparently, Tomales Bay's other claim to fame is being a big oyster growing area so the oysters are usually less than a day old when you get get them.  I can attest to the fact that they were delicious.  How can you beat eating fresh oysters overlooking the bay with you own boat in the background?  Then to finish the evening off we had a little beach fire on our private beach as the fog rolled in.  At one time I declared that this was the "best day yet"  I never should have tempted fate with such a statement as the next days would prove to challenge our happiness.





Oysters at The Marshall Store.
You can just barely see AW way in the background

Beach fire on our "private" beach

 

The following day we returned from a morning dinghy ride to the far South end of the bay to Inverness.  It was a very wet ride back to the boat, but we knew this would be the case so it was all in good fun.  We had a good lunch in Inverness and met the fire chief who was very friendly and gave us some old fire hose for chafe guard on our anchor rode.  The plan was to run the engine to warm up some water in order to have a hot shower.  The discussion of showers, and then hot showers, and things of this nature could be a full post in itself so I'll wait until a latter date to explore that discussion.  When I went to start the engine nothing happened.  This can be attributed to many things so I quickly checked off the easy ones as being ok and then we slowly settled into the fact that we had a real issue on our hands.  There are no good pictures for this part of our time in Tomales Bay as there was really nothing to see.  We spent the rest of that day trying to diagnose the issue with no success.  So we went to bed knowing that we could not leave in the morning, and knowing that we were in some way helpless.  We had discovered that our engine did not work at 4:00 PM on the Friday before the Labor day weekend.  There would be nothing open for three days, we were in a bay that, as described, is not easy to get into, or out of.  This is certainly not a place you would plan to sail out of.  There is not even a dock inside the bay we could sail up to.  If we could sail out of the bay, the nearest harbour is Bodega Bay with a 1.25 mile long channel that isn't even fifty yards wide, and the next nearest place with a marina is San Francisco some 55 miles away.  The next day we notified Vessel Assist, a towing company of sorts, of our predicament just to give them a heads up in case we were to need their services.  They frankly told us it would be three or four days until they could help us.  So the day after the "best day yet" we had a very ominous feeling hanging over our heads as we awoke to try to diagnose this issue.  This feeling is difficult to exactly describe.  We were safe and had been anchored in the same place for four days.  The weather was decent and supposed to stay that way.  We had all the power we needed thanks to our solar panels, we were not out of food and there was fresh water at the beach just South of us.  We had fuel for the dinghy to get to shore.  By no means were we ever in danger; yet it is a very disconcerting feeling of helplessness knowing that you can not leave.  You have three days to figure this out and there is no one to help.  I can spare you the blow by blow account of the fifteen hours of work it took us to figure the issue out.  There were multimeters and many attempt to start the engine involved.  We tore apart the back of the boat tracing wires and checking for possible connection issues.  We eventually did diagnose the problem and lived to tell the story.  It was lucky for us that we had the slightest bit of cell phone coverage and therefore Internet ability with which we were able to access the Catalina 34 forum where we asked some questions and received some valuable advice.  We even received a call from a C34 owner in Erie, PA with some advice that ultimately sent us in the right direction to solve the problem.  The help we received from these people was incredibly helpful and I hope I have the opportunity to help someone in the future as repayment.  By the end of our second day working on the issue we had bypassed the safety systems that ultimately were what failed on the engine and we fired up the engine finally.  I think I literally jumped for joy at the sound of the engine.  That night we went to bed satisfied and proud of ourselves that we had solved this issue with the tools we had on board and a lot of perseverance.

Exiting the bay was much like entering.  We were very tentative.  The engine ran great but it was somewhere in the back of our minds that we had bypassed the oil pressure alarm and if that became an issue it could be catastrophic.  The fog was quite thick as we approached the bar and we fought a three knot flood current in order to pass at high tide.  Just as we approached the final buoy to cross the bar the engine began to overheat.  Not knowing what the issue was we immediately turned around and drifted with the current back the way we had come.  Using some tricks we had picked up in the Delta, I backed down aggressively and cleared the seaweed and grasses off the prop.  That small panic solved we pushed on for the foggy entrance.  Besides the thick fog the exit went just as planned, and all of the sudden we found ourselves motoring across Bodega Bay with little visibility. 

So the sea creature at the bar did not get us and that ended up being the least of our Tomales Bay worries.  Our systems worked well allowing us to spend five nights at anchor with no worries and we had the "opportunity" to learn about our engine.  I think I can say that it was a successful, maybe a little stressful, trip.

Can you see the jelly fish in this picture?

 

Breakfast in the cockpit, pre engine troubles

Leaving Tomales Bay

 

PS: you can check out the new "SPOT Adventures Archived" link on the right for our exact path on this trip. 

Drakes Bay (again, really why?)

8-28-12 – Drakes Bay  – Day 57

Leaving Richardson Bay

Under the Golden Gate

 We have finally crossed under the Golden Gate Bridge headed out to sea.  It sounds so very dramatic.  You also notice I didn’t say we left the Bay area for good yet.  As previously stated, our plan was to head North first to Tomales Bay via Drakes Bay before heading South.  I suppose you could consider this  a little bit of  a pre-trip, ocean shakedown to make sure our systems all work, but I will admit that there is at least some part of me that wanted to conquer  Drakes Bay before we left.  (See my very first post from last October for previous experiences at Drakes Bay)  Also as a bonus, Tomales Bay was supposed to be an amazing place to visit.  The only issue previously was that it’s really a two day trip to get there, the entrance bar is fickle so you can’t always enter even if you make it there and once in you should spend a few days exploring.  So it’s really more of a week trip than a long weekend trip.  Why not start our trip with a visit to these places we thought, who knows when we’ll be back?  So out the Gate we went.  Unsure if we would be back to San Francisco Bay or not.  First stop Drakes Bay.

Sailing North





Going skiing, I mean sailing

Morning in Drakes Bay

If you are familiar with last years trip to Drakes then you have a good idea of the outcome.  For newcomers…The trip North up the coast is generally sucky.  That’s why a lot more people go to Mexico than to Washington from San Francisco.  There are a couple of reasons for this, but let’s just go with it’s more sucky than heading South.  We left from Richardson Bay off of Sausalito with the remnants of an ebb tide to help us out the gate, turned to starboard (right) and followed the Bonita Channel out.  The wind picked up, and up, and up and pretty soon we were tacking upwind with reefed main and jib in 25 knots plus sustained wind.  Just so you know the forecast called for 5 to 15 knots, hence our decision to leave on this particular date.  We motored the last few miles dead into the wind in order to drop the anchor before dark.  The fog had rolled in, which is pretty much commonplace at Drakes Bay as far as I can tell, so we used the radar to spot the two other boats in the anchorage and dropped the hook just inside of the Coast Guard buoy.  This was turning out to be just like our last trip up here.  We went below and waited.  As expected the menace of Drakes Bay came up once we were well fed and sound asleep.  That sound of a freight train running thru your back yard.  Our new anchor gear had not done us wrong yet, and with the anchor alarm on there would be no question if we were dragging.  So why didn’t you sleep like a baby you ask?  Our backyard is the rigging and it amplifies everything including wind, but when the whole boat starts to vibrate and the white caps are slapping the hull; it’s hard not to get up a couple of times and check the GPS and look around to make sure everything is good.  The departure time was 6:00 AM with a 5:00 AM wake up call in order to make our crossing at Tomales Bay bar.  So of course the wind subsided, a little, at 4:30, just enough to fall asleep, and the alarm was especially hard to accept.  Once again, just like last year, we probably should have taken some sleeping pills, put in our earplugs and gone to sleep.  Autumn Wind and her new ground tackle took care of us as usual. Thankfully this year there was no worry or fear,  but once again very little sleep.  I guess I’m not sure if we conquered Drakes or if it still needs to be decided.  It certainly hasn’t beaten us as nothing bad has happened yet, but it does owe us some sleep.


Drakes Bay Sunrise

Green #1 to Starboard

 As we said good bye to the smell of “circus animals” as Elizabeth called it (there is a sea lion rookery on shore and you can tell you’re in Drakes when you can smell the circus) and rounded Green #1 and Chimney Rock on our way to Tomales Bay the sun came up over the mountains to the West making for a beautiful morning.  The previous night just may have been our payment for this morning.

Pics to
Follow...Internet..is..really...slow..in...Tomales...Bay....  (Update 9-2-12, pics now added)

8-26-12 - Loch Lomond Marina, San Rafael, CA - Day 55

It feels like we have become "Marina Queens" lately.  A "Marina Queen" for the non-boaters out there, is that boat that never seems to leave it's slip.  It just sits there waiting to be used; or better said; it sits there waiting to be taken out on the water.  Not necessarily neglected like the derelict boats, but more like a boat that has an owner that wants to go out, but seems to find and endless array of excuses not to.  Not all people care about this title and some think it's just fine.  It really comes down to how you want to use your boat.  For people who's primary purpose in owning a boat is to use their boats in a seaman like way (ie to go places or just go sailing) this is sort of a derogatory term for the guy next to them with the really nicely waxed boat.  The reality is Autumn Wind hasn't fallen victim to this fate.  Although I must admit we have spent the last week in a marina; Loch Lomond Marina in San Rafael, CA to be specific.  (Check the location link to the left for the exact slip in fact)  Actually we are far from this; as was noted by the guy walking by on the dock the other day.  He walked by as I was sitting on the leeward side of the boat as Elizabeth was giving me a hair cut (this means basically shaving my head)  I was on the leeward side so the hair would blow off the boat and ease the clean up.  He says "So you're new liveaboards?"  We both looked up a little offended.  Why would he think this, just because I'm sitting shirtless in 20 knots of wind having Elizabeth shave my head as our running clothes flap in the breeze off the rail to dry out at eleven o'clock on a Thursday; does that mean we are liveaboards?  Secretly, I felt a little proud to know that it looked like I lived on our boat, since I do, and that's the whole point of this thing, right?  I answered in my most yachtsman like way "why no, we are not liveaboards at all.  We are, in fact, a yacht in transit"  So I didn't really say that and we had a little chat about what we are doing and where we are heading.  But little to my knowledge, I had been told, that there is a distinct difference between a liveaboard and a yacht in transit, and that's what I wanted to say if I was more witty.  The exact difference is for someone else to explain because I don't really know what it is.



"It's only a mile or two"  More like 7!

So, yes we have been in a marina for the last week.  After leaving the Petaluma Turning Basin we proceeded to an anchorage off of China Camp.  (The location of the last post)  We spent two nights there before we rounded Pt. San Pedro and headed up the San Rafael Channel to Loch Lomond Marina where we have been camped out in slip J5 for the past seven nights.  In fact this is the longest we have been in one location since leaving Grand Marina a month ago.  The good thing about this location is that it is just far enough from San Rafael that we can't just walk in to do some shopping or eat dinner.  This has helped us stay on budget.  It also caused Elizabeth to con me into a 7.5 mile walk one day to "check out a restaurant she found on Yelp".  So we put some miles on our feet this week as well.



Working on the solar panels

In fact this has been a strategic stop to complete some projects that have been lingering.  The biggest of which is the installation of our solar panels.  That's where the "strategic" part of this stop comes in.  It just so happens that the guy who sold us the solar panels and parts, and who knows how this stuff should be assembled, lives in this marina and actually about four slips down from us on J dock.  This made getting our questions answered much easier.  While the total install took us about forty hours, (like four full days of work) I feel the end result is great and in ideal conditions we are actually energy independent.  I will make note that drilling many holes thru stainless tubing with a battery powered drill on a rocking boat is not for the timid.  This was the hardest part of the install and it turned out great in the end.  I must say thanks to Rob at Southbound Solar for all of his help, advice and the huge number of tools he lent us to help complete our project.  I think he was just as excited to see it come together as we were.


The final product of many hours of work.  Free power
here we come!



That's 9.3 Amps of FREE power!



E showing off her dinghy numbers

Besides the solar project we accomplished a bunch of other things that had been on the list for a while.  Elizabeth painted our registration numbers on the dinghy, so we are finally legal.  Not that that has stopped us from using it, but now we shouldn't get pulled over by the Coast Guard.  You wouldn't think putting black numbers on a PVC boat would be that complicated, but it is.  Nothing wants to stick or stay and the numbers usually end up pealing off of running onto the deck within a few days.  So 

Propane bottle cover.  A sewing machine sure would
have been nice.

with any luck this will be the last time for this operation.  She also sewed us a cover for our spare propane bottle.  How domestic of her!  I finally ran all of the lines for the second reef back tot he cockpit completing that project.  To finish the week off I finally had the time to replace our macerator.  The people who know what a macerator is and what this entails are rolling on the ground right now laughing at me because they know this may be one of the crappiest (ha joke) jobs next to rebuilding the head there is to do on a boat.  The macerator is sort of like (well exactly like) your garbage disposal, except that it chops up and pumps out our holding tank  In fact the box says it will chop up vegetable up to one inch.  This item has become more important recently as we will be leaving the Bay area soon and once you are beyond a magic line offshore you can legally pump your stuff overboard which makes conserving holding tank space less important.  The project went quite well, or at least as good as dealing with your own liquefied waste can go.  So with this week of projects behind us it looks like we are ready.  Drakes Bay and Tomales Bay are on our minds.  We'll see what the weather gods have to say about our plans.

What's that in your hand?  If you guessed
 a poo chopper you're right.

View from our anchorage in Richardson Bay.

Stopping Traffic

8-17-12 China Camp Anchorage - Day 46

3 Mile Slough Lift Bridge

While I would love to say that it's due to my amazing good looks, or more likely Elizabeth's, that's not what I'm talking about.  I'm talking about bridges.  Draw bridges, swing bridges, bascule bridges, slide bridges, lift bridges and the scariest of them all, fixed bridges.  We've seen just about every kind of bridge you can imagine in the last few weeks while traveling thru the Delta and now up to Petaluma.  As I said the fixed bridges are really the scariest since, well, they don't move out of the way and we have this tall metal thing on top of our boat.  For some reason, no matter how high and how confident you are that the boat will fit thru them, there is always that second of panic when you look up and it looks like the bridge will clip the top of the mast.  Of course it never does and people with much larger boats than us go under these things so this fear is irrational; or is it?   You just never know. 



Swing Bridge - somewhere in the Delta?

The bridge openings come in all types.  We've become fairly adept at contacting the various bridge tenders to ask for openings as we approach.  Some of them seem to be surly old men that use little or no radio protocol and make you feel like some snooty sailor for trying to be proper and polite.  Some are sweet ladies that wave to you from their control room; actually every single one of the bridge tenders waved to us.  I've heard that being a bridge tender is not as easy as it sounds because you are responsible for some of the maintenance work as well, but it sure seems like a chill job.  Just sitting in your control shack waiting for some nice boat to call you and ask for an opening.  Close the gates to stop traffic and then slowly move the bridge out of the way.  Wave to the boaters and close the bridge again.  Sounds good to me.  All you have to do is not drop the bridge on a boat.  You wouldn't think that would be hard either, but we know someone who got clipped by a bridge as the bridge tender dropped it and then went to the bathroom without looking.  No damage but I'm sure it was scary!  Then there's the Petaluma bridge that requires a four hour notice to open on all but Friday, Saturday and Sunday when they need 24 hour notice.  Those hours seem backwards to me but I guess they need a break as well.  And what happens if the current catches you within that four hour call ahead and you miss your time? Do you need to call again and circle for another four hours? 



Bacon Island Swing Bridge

Really the craziest part of opening a bridge is that I am able to stop traffic for five or ten minutes while I mosey my slug of a sailboat thru.  Some bridges have a lot of traffic, like the Rio Vista lift bridge. Some have almost none, like the Bacon Island Swing Bridge.  I wonder what is going thru the peoples minds as they sit in their cars, probably late for work or on a delivery, watching me in my flip flops cruise thru at five knots or so, waving happily to the bridge tender, seemingly not a care in the world.  I really have nowhere to be, they are on a deadline.  There is one of me and a whole lot more than that of them.  It almost seems like I should have to wait for a lull in the traffic to make my passage, not traffic waiting for me.  It's really not a fair system, but since I'm on the good side of it right now, I'm not complaining.  Anyway, next time you find yourself waiting for a bridge, try not to get mad a the injustice of the whole thing and think of your friends on Autumn Wind. 

Rio Vista Lift Bridge across Sacramento River














People with places to be

As a side note:  Petaluma is a very cool place.  Unfortunately, it's one of those places that seems to want to take your money.  There's loads of great places to eat and drink and shops to spend money in so you can buy more stuff that we have nowhere to store.  So after two days in the turning basin we had to leave.  Never the less it is a great spot to visit by boat.





D Street Bridge, Petaluma

Unused RR swing bridge on Petaluma River



Actually a pedestrian bridge across the Petaluma
turning basin




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Post Doo Dah Doin's in the Delta - Part 2

8-9 & 8-10-12 - Discovery Bay, CA



This is how you draw a map to your
house when there are no roads.

I would be negligent if I didn't mention one of our favorite stops of our trip to the Delta.  Adams Marina, cantina and cruisers hangout in Discovery Bay, CA.  They only have three slips, two of which are almost always occupied, unless they are in Mexico; so call ahead for reservations.  With power and water dockside the slips are quite nice.  The cost is nothing for friends; I'm not exactly sure how we receive the privilege of that label, but I guess we made the cut.  When we arrived we were greeted at the dock, the rum bar was laid out and ready and fresh pico de'gallo was being prepared.  After a nice evening tour of Discovery Bay on the pontoon boat, owners Jim and Betty sat down with ourselves and another couple for a delicious dinner of Mahi Mahi, salads straight from the garden and chocolate souffle.  The last two contributed by Bob and Lori who were joining us for dinner.  Embarrassingly, we had little to share except a cheap bottle of wine as we hadn't seen a real market or grocery store in ten days or so.  Thankfully everyone allowed us to share what they had prepared even though we had little to contribute.  Stories of past sailing exploits were swapped as Elizabeth and I soaked up the ideas since they have many more miles under their keels than we do.  We talked about religion (I mean anchors and ground tackle) and places we want to go that they have already been.


The Adams Mini Marina

The following day Jim and Betty offered up the use of their car to go shopping.  Remember that we had known them about a week and there is a good chance they didn't even know our last name.  They ended up joining us and we spent the day learning tips and tricks for cruising and stocking up on needed provisions.  To top off the day, Jim talked the guy at West Marine in to giving us a 40% discount on our propane tank and then took us to dinner at the yacht club they belong to, where we were not allowed to pay for drinks.
The next morning a knock on the cabin top announced that blueberry pancakes were being served under the palapa.  After a heap of pancakes and some garage saling we had to undo the dock lines and say goodbye.



Houses in Discovery Bay

Elizabeth modeling our waterproof Gill jacket we
bought for $0.25 (yes 25 CENTS) at a garage sale

Betty, Jim, Me, Elizabeth under the palapa

We met Jim and Betty on the Doo Dah the previous week when we found ourselves at Mildred Island.  (see previous post for details on the "island")  They had done the Baja Ha Ha (not the Delta Doo Dah) to Mexico twice before on a boat of similar size as Autumn Wind.  We picked their brains a little and compared our setup to theirs.  They were very accepting of our compromises and reassured us that not everything needed to be 100% "marine grade" to work.  They invited us to dinner the next week.  This worked out great as 1. we had nowhere to be, 2. they have a dock in their backyard for Autumn Wind to stay.  Apparently, that is the deal in Discovery Bay; Check it out on the location button to the right.  Discovery Bay is deep, deep, deep into the Delta.  It's about as far as you can go in a sailboat.  Let's just say they stop putting depths on the chart when you get this far into the delta, probably because the chart makers figure anyone transiting this area has a powerboat.  I spent a lot of time staring at the depth gauge on this leg of the trip.  Anyway, they hosted us for two nights at their dock/house and made it very clear that we would be welcome as long as we liked.  Betty and Jim are some of the many people who have continued to inspire and encourage us that we are not crazy and this trip is very accomplishable.  At some time during our stay they reminded us that we were actually already on our trip.  We had moved beyond the planning stage and the "when we leave" stage, and we should accept that fact and stop talking about maybe we'll do it and start talking about the fact that we are doing it.  While at dinner at their yacht club they introduced us as their guests and Betty mentioned that we ARE (not maybe) doing the Baja Ha Ha.  So with that; all of the Stockton Sailing Club now knows Autumn Wind is going to Mexico.  I guess there's no backing out now!  In fact the day after we left them we hoisted the Baja Ha Ha burgee in recognition that the trip has in fact already begun. 


Saying Goodbye

Looks like the trip has started

Post Doo Dah Doin's in the Delta - Part 1

8-11-12 - Mildred Island, CA (again) - Day - Day 40

I suppose the first thing I should clarify is that Mildred Island isn't really an island.  So for those of you who are worried that this whole boating thing is a hoax and we are in a hotel on some island in California, it's not.  We are actually anchored out, on Autumn Wind, on (or in, however you want to look at it) an island.  At east it used to be an island, all be it lower than sea level, but the levee broke in 1983and it flooded.  Then instead of pumping the ocean out of the island (think New Orleans here) they left it flooded and now its a 1000 acre anchorage, that's 10 to 14 feet deep everywhere you go.  You just need to remember that there's still a levee around 99.5% or it, so be careful where you enter!  Just wanted to clarify the island thing.

With the Delta Doo Dah officially over; Autumn Wind has found herself plying the waters of the California Delta; trying to see new things and experience the Delta life before leaving.  We have found ourselves heading up the Mokelumne River and Georgiana Slough to Walnut Grove, Back down the Sacramento River to Decker Island again, up the San Joaquin River to Potato Slough and then deep, deep, deep into the Delta (probably as deep as a sailboat can go) to Discovery Bay.  Unfortunately our sailboat has tuned into more of a really slow river trawler the last week, as we’ve had to motor almost the entire 65 miles traveled to these locations.  We did put the sails up on the way to Walnut Grove, mostly so we could have right of way if needed.   



Georgiana Slough

License plate on the wall at Al the Wop's in Locke, CA

While our trip to Walnut Grove wasn’t all we thought it would be, it did give us a taste of the Delta life, was a new experience and gave us a glimpse of what it might be like to do this transient boat thing full time.  The trip up the Georgiana Slough felt like something out of the movie Apocalypse Now.  The trees and foliage closed in on each side of the boat, close enough that more than two boats would have a hard time passing.  I thought for sure that at any time the natives would appear out of the bushes with poisoned spears to attack.  It required a vigilant watch to make sure we made it.  We tied up at “Boon Dock” just short of the Walnut Grove bridge.  Believing that the paperwork was too complicated or just because she didn’t care; the lady we tried to pay for the dock space said don’t worry about it, so the night was free at least.  We spent the day touring Walnut Grove and the historic town of Locke; drinking at the required local establishments; Al the wops, Tony’s and the Bistro Wine Garden; having ice cream at Mel’s and then retired to the foredeck to sample cheap wine out of our new second hand wine glasses.  By wine glasses I mean those hefty four ounce shot glasses you see at bars. (They won’t break like real wine glasses, thanks for the idea Tara!) We were told that they were once shot glasses at Al the Wops, so that gives them some significance; I think?  We had planned to spend two nights in Walnut Grove, but fast forward to the morning at five AM and we started to hear the wrrrrrrrrrrrrr thunk thunk of every vehicle as it passed over the extruded steel deck of the Walnut Grove bridge. 

Walnut Grove Bridge - before it woke us up

  What are all these people doing on the road at this hour?  Oh yea, they have jobs.  I had forgotten about that part of life.  So it was sort of an early morning.  We took advantage of the early morning and our proximity to a laundromat  figuring that you never know when you’ll have the opportunity to wash your clothes in the future.  I walked to Mel’s (the ice cream shop that serves coffee in the morning) and brought back a couple of coffees and a nice muffin for us to share.  I was thinking “good job Brian, you remembered the muffin, Elizabeth will be so happy”  right about the time I turned the corner and there’s a Mexican food truck sitting in the parking lot of the Laundromat.  Elizabeth was outside and she excitedly announced that she had convinced them to make us some burritos before they left to make their rounds out in the fields around town.  “they make Breakfast burritos?” I asked

“Nope, just regular burritos, you get asada and I got chicken!” 

Needless to say we didn’t need lunch after my asada burrito at eight AM. 
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Burritos for breakfast? (you can see the truck in the window.)

They take drinking in a laundromat
very seriously in Walnut Grove




Doing laundry is so much fun.

Decker Island anchorage

We left Walnut Grove and made it back to Decker Island where I figure it was time to stop fooling around and do some work.  Which I did for about two hours, after I took a swim.  I suppose boat maintenance is now my "work."  Not a bad place to go to work. 

It's tough going to work sometimes