Brunos Island on the San Joaquin River to Napa Valley Marina Cruise

To many experienced sailors, this cruise story will be quite boring and remedial. But to Ken and I, it was our first long distance sailing cruise together in which we were skipper and first mate. For the most part, I think we did quite well. Ken might have a few stories to tell -- but I say don't ask and maybe he won't tell.

We picked the Vallejo Yacht Club as our desired stopping point on the first night, because we are very interested in joining the club and in potentially birthing Crossroads there when she gets out of dry dock. We like the area, the people, and the fact that we can keep our boat right there with other members. Being social creatures, we sailors like to interact with other sailors to exchange ideas, cruise together, and even swap great stories. We hoped we could get a little taste of what it would be like to be a part of this club by spending a night.

The second leg of our trip -- which was quite short was to be from the Vallejo Yacht Club Marina to the Napa Valley Marina and there are no pictures of that because the memory card in the camera was full (Note to Charlene: next time you head out on a momentus trip -- start with a clean memory card!)

Planning a Perfect World:

It was our goal to start from Marker 40 - just outside of Seven Mile Slough on the San Joaquin River - at 9:00 am. According to our planning, this would be at slack tide before an ebb. Our only concern was fog which would make it very difficult to see the channel markers or any other vessels.

The idea was that since the prevailing winds are from the west, we needed the advantage of the current the closer we got to the Carquinez Strait. In the perfect conditions, we would hit the Carquinez Strait after the max ebb and during slack tide so that the flood current would carry us up the Mare Island Strait. Of course, the flood tide was not projected to be particularly strong, so if we fell behind and had to go against the current, it would not be as bad as it would be on another day.

From Vallejo, we would set out for the Napa Valley Marina up the Napa River. We did not want to head up the Napa River at a particularly low tide, but to make it to the marina in daylight hours we couldn't wait until the flood on Sunday, February 21st. That turned out to be just fine and we had no problems with water depth at all.

The Real Trip

We were late getting started by 20 minutes - and the good news is that we had plenty of wind - enough that after a few tacks back and forth (and yours truly getting rather tired), we furled up the jib and sailed with just the main. That turned out to be perfect and made the entire trip much better than it would have been otherwise.

It was windy and choppy near the entrance to Suisun Bay and where we expected it to be extremely windy (the Carquinez Strait) it was actually quite manageable - of course this could be because we were already used to a lot of wind and the build up to the Carquinez Strait was over-projected.

Our wind speed indicator topped out at 32 knots, but Crossroads handled that just fine - as did her skipper who had fortunately made this trip before with a group from the Club Rio Sailing School.

I, on the other hand still get nervous when the boat heels very far. I had to get used to that, given our trip was a good 9 hours and heeling just goes with sailing upwind. To help me deal with that, I remembered what one of my sailing instructors told me (and later wrote about in one of ASA's newsletters) about the stability of a sailboat and the spill of the wind over the sails. That is to say (if you're not familiar with the idea), a sailboat is designed to heel about 20 degrees and the more it heels, the more the weighted keel comes in to play and wind spills off the sails so it tends to upright itself. That did give me comfort.

In all honesty, I have to say I was really impressed by our boat and how it handled the entire way. We set the alarm on the depth sounder so that when we opted to wander outside the channel, we would have some warning of any shoals. Generally, these shallower places are noted on the charts, but we saw at least one shoal along the way that was right in the channel.

The scenery as we got into the Carquinez Strait was spectacular from the water we heard a train coming around the green hillside behind the homes nestled in the trees and it was like a dream. As the sun began to set in front of us, the clouds changed colors and the water shone with gold, yellow, red, and blue. This would be a great place to spend some time sailing!

As we got closer to the Carquinez Bridge, we smelled something burning and Ken was very concerned. We had replaced all of the gauges on Crossroads, but were unable to get the temperature gauge to work. Oh no -- please, not the engine overheating. We were motor sailing the entire way and had been very conservative -- not running up the engine beyond about 1800 rpms. When I went below to check the engine compartment, the smell was gone -- I could only smell the burning topside in the cockpit. Surely that was a good sign right?? Then looking around, Ken noticed the C & H sugar factory and we both realized the burning smell was that of burnt sugar. Whew!!! We could have sailed without the engine, but we were running out of daylight now and were really tired plus we needed to get our dogs ashore to relieve themselves pretty soon!

Once we passed the Carquinez Bridge, the view of the lights was amazing. Unfortunately, the shutter speed on the camera was so slow and the motion of the boat too great that the shots are very blurry. Hopefully, you can get the general idea from the slide show we have posted on this site.

Once we got into the strait, however, there were pilings and other obstacles that were not marked, so I stayed on the bow to help direct Ken as we moved forward.

Entering the Vallejo Yacht Club Marina we had lighted markers. But the place we were to birth was really tricky. We needed to do a stern tie up next to a series of power boats. Fortunately, Ken and I had taken a great class (from Club Rio) called Basic Coastal Cruising and we had to learn to do "prop walk turns" in which you turn the sailboat around in place. I won't go into all the details of docking the boat except to say Ken did great and said he was happy he had taken that class.

It was about 8:00 pm and we'd only munched on apples all day. After walking Jake and Cody (whose bladders were about to burst), we went into the clubhouse to see about the procedures of getting in and out of the marina so we could get some food somewhere. We didn't have the right power cord to hook up to electricity, so I couldn't cook up the tilapia I brought. Members of the Pittsburg Yacht Club had been visiting and were finishing up dinner. They looked at us and decided they needed to feed us. Boy -- we couldn't refuse that!! We had a great time visiting with them and ended up going to breakfast the following morning with them, the marina's port captain, and some folks from the VYC.

The VYC marina port captain spent some time with us the following morning reviewing our trip up the Napa River and even loaned us one of his charts. We soaked up everything he had to say and then departed around 1:20 pm. We had a great time at VYC and really enjoyed all the help and commradre of the other folks there. We can't say enough about the friendliness, as well, of the Pittsburg Yacht Club.

The following morning we headed out on our second and last leg of the trip up the Napa River. First off, we needed to have the Mare Island Bridge raised. I can tell you that in its up position, it doesn't look very high at all -- in fact, we wondered if it was up all the way, but knew we needed to get through it so that traffic didn't back up too much. Our hearts almost stopped because as we got closer and closer, it didn't look like our mast was going to fit - but then it did! Whew! The rest of our trip up the Napa River was very quiet and scenic and we finally got the boat docked and in position to be hauled out the following morning.

It was a good trip and we met some great people. It was nothing like a long ocean cruise, but it was a lot of fun and quite an adventure for the two of us as a couple learning to be a better team sailing together. I know that I need to get more comfortable behind the wheel - at the helm - and Ken needs to get more comfortable with navigation and reading the charts. But all in good time.

Our next posts will be of the progress we're making to get Crossroads in ship-shape for some great spring and summer sailing!

Stay tuned for further updates!

Sailing in the San Joaquin River

Sailing in the eastern Delta - whether the Sacramento or San Joaquin Rivers can be quite fun. Since, however, these bodies of water are rivers running toward the San Francisco Bay in a southwesterly direction with prevailing winds out of the west, we do a lot of tacking.

Also, these rivers serve as the deep water channels for large cargo and other vessels coming up from the San Francisco Bay to the Ports of Stockton and Sacramento.

So whatever rules of the road that apply to sailboats vs. powerboats need to be waived when in the shipping channels.

That said, for the most part, there is plenty of room for everyone and plenty to see and do.

Here is a picture of Ken at the helm of Crossroads on a quiet day in January.

If you are thinking of or already sail in this region, you might want to check out the Andreas Cove Yacht Club and/or the Club Rio Sailing School.