DELTA CRUISE 07 - SECOND DAY 06/29/07

Today I would have company! Jon Hillegeist, a friend I met while chartering boats with the Tradewinds Sailing Club before I purchased my own boat, will meet me about 12:30 PM for the sail to the Delta Marina at Rio Vista on the Sacramento River.
When I woke up this morning I was aground at the slip. The Martinez Marina is very shallow and I truly realized that when I saw sea gulls walking on the mud on the other side of the dock where I was tied up.
By the time Jon arrived the boat was floating again and we set sail for Rio Vista. The winds were great - about 15 to 18 knots and off our starboard quarter most of the time. The picture shows some of the "Mothballed" boats stored in Suisun Bay that we sailed past on the way to Rio Vista.
For some reason, I had gotten it into my head that we would be sailing under the Antioch Bridge. That was pretty dumb because the bridge goes over the San Joaquin River and we were sailing up the Sacramento River which was considerably North of the San Joaquin River at that point. As a result I got us sailing the wrong direction and we ended up about a half a mile South of the Sacramento River in some really shallow water. We finally made our way out of the shallows without going aground but one time we were dragging the keel through the mud. The depth finder was showing below one foot of depth a lot! When we realized that we were in shallow water we should have immediately made a "180" and headed back to where we had come from. We finally did that and in about 15 minutes we were back in the Sacramento River again with lots of water under us.
We arrived at the Delta Marina without any more "excitement". My son, Fred, arrived about an hour after we got there and we piled in his car to get Jon back to Martinez to pick up his car and go home. Fred and I ended the day with dinner at "The Point" Restaurant in the Delta Marina back at Rio Vista and I got my Calimari Steak there (and it was really good, too!!).