The Sacramento Delta

Wow almost a month has gone by since I last posted! I have a good excuse, we went on a family vacation and lots of our pictures are on our friend Dave's camera. So I've been waiting to get those pictures. (this is actually a rewrite, because as I was posting Eddie went and got the pictures for me.) So I re edited my slide show and re wrote this opening paragraph, taking out my snide remarks about certain people not getting me the pictures. So...Thanks Eddie for getting me the pictures. I appreciate it.

This year we took our family vacation at the Sacramento River Delta. We rented a house in Bethel Island and wake boarded and fished for 4 days. Our friend Dave and his two boys came with us. We started out at about 6:00 am for our trek from Southern California to Northern California, it took us about 6 hours to get there. The house we stayed at was right in the water with a dock out front that we tied our boat up to. Eddie fished off the dock when we weren't out using the boat. We had access to a paddle boat and gave our legs a good work out paddling around Bethel Island.



The Delta is different from a lake in the sense that it is 2 rivers that converge and eventually exit out into the Pacific Ocean. The Delta consists of natural and man made channels. There is a strong current that flows and one can even see the effects of high and low tides. The Delta claims to have a thousand miles of waterways. We definitely were feeling a little overwhelmed when we got there. But Eddie bought a map and we ventured out to find to discover the Delta. We found water that was smooth and rideable all day long, every day were there. For those of you who don't boat, finding water is the biggest quest of the day. It can literally make or break our day if someone, (Eddie) can't find good water.

We had a learning curve, and some things to adjust to boating at the Delta versus our regular Lake Nacimiento. But after a day or so we were doing quite well finding our way around and avoiding scary situations. What one must understand is that not only are ski boats at the Delta but large fishing boats and yachts cruise around too. We encountered a large yacht on our first afternoon out. Jake was riding behind the boat going down a somewhat narrow channel, when here comes a large yacht, not thinking this through, we waved at them in a friendly manner and maintained our speed. Well when we hit their wake we seriously got launched! Morgan was sitting in the bough of our boat and went flying into the air, at the same time our boat went flying into the air. Eddie was ready to push Morgan back into the boat because he thought she was going into the water. Jake riding behind our boat was able to wake board off the large wakes and get in a few good jumps! Our boat came entirely out of the water, we are guessing around 5-8 ft and then we crashed back down. Morgan landed in the boat but hit her wrist and got the wind knocked out of her. I was really afraid she broke her wrist and it took several minutes for her to recover from the experience of having the wind knocked out of her like that. Now I was getting all of this on video, but as luck would have it, in all the excitement I hit the off button and I only got the moments before all the excitement and Eddie cursing. But we tried to avoid those larger ships and learned to drop our speed and plow through their wake if unavoidable. Watch the video at your own discretion...



Another crazy thing about the Delta is that there are sea otters in the water. They swim up from The Pacific and hang out in the channels. We had one hanging out at our boat dock for a couple of days. He was a brave guy and would try to steal Eddie's fishing bait off the swim step with Eddie sitting right there on the back of the boat. To be honest, I thought about the otter the whole time I was sitting in the water waiting to get up. But once I was up I didn't think about it. Jake claims we almost hit one while I was riding, but I hope he was kidding. Cruising around the Delta and exploring new areas was really fun! I liked going somewhere new and hope we go back again.