San Pablo Bay Adventure

A cloudy (fog, fog, fog...say it slowly) out of the Estuary to head north to the Delta. Jean is in her throne and needs a few more phone books to see over the wheel. The boat in back was part of the Jazz Cup race that was going our direction - north towards Delta. We got close to them so Queen jean could do her wave. They pretended to be unimpressed - they had bodies everywhere and we were sailing a huge boat with three people.
The sun came out and we coasted through the hundred or so boat getting ahead of them all as they milled around the start. Great, soft weather, little wind -an amazing ride across the Slot and up the north Bay. Unusual as we are usually blown to rats...



Ok - happiness here as we had been pulled off "the sandbar" by two angels: Eric and Mark, after a hellish night of kedging to get into deep water. Eric runs a strange little marina tucked away on San Pablo Bay that looks as if it was the site for a marine Deliverance movie. We took the dogs in to relieve their crossed legs and found Eric and his son.
So Plan B ---go to Pt. Richmond.

And a very tired skipper(below) who had cranked and cranked and

stayed up most of the night to make sure we didn't fall over on our keel. We floated, sort of.... and managed to get some energy to leap in the air when Eric pulled us off on the first try, right into the deep.

We were all exhausted: this is cruising, working out solutions. According to Jean and Robert, the boat had slid over the anchor after all the midnight kedging and we were probably ready to swing free with the tide. But with the exhaustion, lack of sleep and muscles aching from the winching, we could allow help from the angels. Eric is a Baptist who helps out disadvantaged kids, and he didn't want any money for his help, saying: I have clothes, food on the table, and need nothing.

We gave him something for the kids, thinking that gas costs money and we can pay it forward.


As for those boats in the Jazz cup, they glided, spinnakers and strange south wind, beautiful damn butterflies fight in front of us. Maybe they thought we had stopped to enjoy the race. Unh huh.

These are actually two islands: the Brothers. And as they are on the left side, we were in deep water and heading for a night of rest at Pt. Richmond, muttering that not one of those bastard Jazz Cup guys offered to help. They were smart.