Sailing Education Adventures

Dear Folks,

This was the Delta Ditch Run Weekend!  Nearly 150 boats, some from as far away as San Diego and Seattle, showed up for the annual downwind parade from chilly San Francisco Bay to warm and sunny Stockton, 67 miles to the east.  It's a beautiful sail up the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, through the Delta, to the Stockton Sailing Club's marina.  Start wearing foulies and Finish wearing bikinis and speedos!

Not this year!  We started with 12 other boats in "Division 2 Heavy" in driving rain and moderate wind.  An hour later the wind had pretty much disappeared, but the rain persisted.  An hour after that there was even less wind (see picture above) and the rain continued.  We were sailing on the Flood, which pushed us along in the right direction, but Floods don't last forever and soon the Ebb began to kick in.

The wind came back a little, from every which direction in San Pablo Bay, and we eventually passed under the Highway 80 bridges at Carquinez Strait and sailed past the C&H Sugar factory in what had now become an Easterly breeze.  The wind coming out of the East meant we were beating, making long tacks from one side of the Strait to the other.  At 4:00, after sailing for 5 hours, we'd arrived at Benecia, with over 40 miles left to sail.  Did I mention the rain?

We decided retiring was preferable to tacking all night in the rain - and the odds that we'd Finish before the 9:00 am deadline on Sunday were about the same as winning the lottery.  So, we started the engine, turned around, and headed back to Richmond.  As soon as we did that the heaviest rain I've seen in years hit us for about 20 minutes.  It wasn't hail, but it was close.  Huge drops pounded down and the water around the boat looked like someone was dumping barrels of marbles from high above.  That stopped, and then it came back for awhile just for fun!  It was a good test for foul weather gear.

When we were back under the Carquinez Bridges and in San Pablo Bay the weather changed again.  It stopped raining and a nice NW wind kicked in, which allowed us to begin sailing faster than the outboard was pushing us along.  We actually had a great sail back down from that point on.  The GPS says we sailed about 55 miles total, arriving back at the Richmond Yacht Club at about 9:00 to drop off Leah and Leslie before Jeffrey and I motored back to Sausalito to put the boat away.

Oh, did I mention we Started the race with 12 other boats in our Division?  In a way, we're "tied" for 2nd Place even though we didn't get but about 1/3 of the way to the Stockton Sailing Club since only 1 boat in our Division managed to Finish the race.  That puts us as DNF (Did Not Finish) with all the other boats!  Okay, I can't put that one over on those of you who sail, so a DNF is a DNF.

It was an interesting day and I enjoyed Leah, Leslie, and Jeffrey's company very much.  We'll think about doing the race again next year, but only if the weather forecast is a whole lot different - I want to see those bikinis, although perhaps not the speedos.  The sunset as we passed back under the Richmond Bridge was nothing less than spectacular.  A fitting end to this year's Delta Ditch "Fiasco."

Pat
"NANCY"