Nojan has already shared his thoughts on our big non-stop ride down the coast from Neah Bay, WA to Sausalito, CA and a bit about some of the projects we are undertaking on the boat while we sit at marinas in the Bay Area. I’m still not sure what I want to say about the trip, so instead I’ll share a bit about what I’m doing today.

We’d heard from one of our Coho Ho Ho sister boats, S/V Sacagawea, that they wanted to cruise up the Sacramento Delta. Being from the Central Valley, I don’t really think of it as a leisure destination. When in Sausalito, we were right next to the famous Bay Model and went in there to check it out. One could clearly see that going up the delta would be easier than what we did on September 1st when we entered the narrow dredged channel into San Rafael creek with 20 kts of wind across our beam. Maybe when we get out of here (at high tide of course), we should go check it out.

We’ve also heard again and again from lots of locals that its worth going up there if only just as far as Benicia but ideally going all the way up to Antioch. We understand it would be mostly motoring, but perhaps it would be of interest. We hear Sucia Bay and a stop in Sucia City are especially nice , too. Certainly we’d see even more waterfowl and other birds as we passed along several sloughs and could even take our little dingy up into some wetlands to explore.

But whenever I think of San Pablo Bay and points beyond, I must admit I have certain impressions of that area… partly arising from the most common context I heard many of those town names in was in the Primus songs I listened to when I was younger (El Sob #1 is something Jerry is quoted as saying in “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver”) but also from feeling it’s a bit too much like the rural areas of Stanislaus County (where I grew up) but with more water and different crops. When I was younger, I liked going to Vallejo to visit Marine World Africa USA. I’m not sure I’d want to patronize any onshore establishments in the delta given the surging delta variant of COVID-19 and the relatively lower vaccination rates in Solano County (higher than US average but lower than the more urban areas of CA and WA). I wonder how much COVID-19 considerations will come up on my travels…certainly it made us delay the start by a whole year.

However, this really great “Exploring the Pacific Coast : San Diego to Seattle” cruising guide we bought at a Seattle Public Library sale also covers the delta area and makes it sound worth doing. At the very least, maybe we’ll take a trip around the corner from San Rafael Creek within San Pablo Bay and anchor overnight outside China Camp or McNears Beach. Exploring the little inlets and sloughs looked promising from the point of view of the SMART train that we took from downtown San Rafael to downtown Santa Rosa yesterday. We could even see the marina up the Petaluma river (not part of the delta but you still get there through San Pablo Bay… also not a route we’re even considering on our boat even though it looked cute from the train).

So far we are just working through boat projects so are in no great hurry to explore. We replaced our stove which was not performing well anymore and wasn’t really repairable (the threaded stems that held on the nut for the burner caps were too corroded to hold them well anymore and the burners were not burning cleanly possibly because those were loose). That was a big project but mostly a matter of measure very carefully and learn that the ENO Open Sea two burner stove was a nearly perfect fit (same gimbal points but just slightly narrower so we had to add a big of a shim between the bracket and the wall one side… also drops down a little lower from the gimbal points but still has just enough room below to swing). We also finally took off the front hatch that had a slow leak that was destroying the varnish, sanded the wood around the hatch and revarnished and rebedded the hatch with lots of butyl.

I’m going to make a little on-deck storage bag to keep the storm jib hanked on during passages… need to decide whether to just use the SailRite kit with some adptations to fit better or design my own. It’s warm here so I may finally make that windscoop out of old spinnaker fabric I salvaged from Djinn.

We need to figure out when we’ll get out on the water for practicing some of our storm sail maneuvers. Tomorrow afternoon has a period of higher tide where we could head out for a while and then head back in without too much difficulty. I think we saw a few boats doing the same when we had lunch over by San Rafael creek.

Meantime, maybe I’ll blast “Sailing The Seas of Cheese” from start to finish like I’m back in high school again and see if it inspires me to go up into San Pablo bay and beyond. Oracle of Claypool? Gotta do something productive while I’m defrosting the fridge. Oh… and now as I’m listening to it I’m hearing the lyrics to Sgt. Baker, “… you ain’t got no horns boy,” and remembering how I always wanted to leave Modesto and move to a truly urban area with more diverse communities and whatnot. I never felt safe or accepted in the Central Valley. And I suppose I have similar misgivings about the delta communities. But I don’t need to go onshore, right?

I suppose the allure of going to Mexico and other countries may be partly that I know nothing of the politics. Hm, truth. We have been feeling a bit out of place in these parts of California because it’s not so much of an adventure to be here but more of revisiting areas of a place we both chose to move away from. Modesto, San Rafael, Silicon Valley… all places we left to move to Seattle.

As I was writing this, I got called away to deliver some tools Nojan needed to help with our friend’s boat project in the neighboring slip. Our friend reminded us that we’d not need to go ashore at all and that most folks we saw out on the water would be going so much faster than us that we’d barely even see them. He even gave me a Sacramento – San Joaquin Delta Map for Recreational Boating to see more about it. The map is clearly targeting those fishermen. Which reminds me… I’ve only got two cold beers on board and yesterday’s giant taster trays from Russian River Brewing have surely passed through me already. Still feeling 50-50 on the delta trip, but we’ll post pictures and stories if we do it.

Disclaimer: all impressions of the delta area people are my own and not Nojan’s. I have lived places more rural than Modesto in Stanislaus County and those experiences of my youth had a certain impact on me that certainly flavors my impressions. I do not know much about the delta people other than assuming they are more similar to agricultural communities of California like those in the Central Valley counties that I have lived in or visited than they are to say people in San Francisco or Oakland.