Bay Cruise - Part I

Om September 28th we left home and headed for our boat. We had a full afternoon of getting ready to leave for Pittsburg, Ca the next morning to begin our annual bay cruise. It was very warm and we got everything loaded on our boat and hubby fired up our little runabout (a 185 Sea Ray) and he headed to Ebony Boat Club while I drove to Ebony Boat Club to pick him up. The water was flat and he got to Ebony in about 40 minute. About the same time as it took me. We dropped off the little boat (needed it for youth day on October 8th) and headed back to our boat.

Off to Pittsburg we went the next morning. The water was calm and the sailing was easy. We arrived in about three hours and gassed up and pumped out. We then purchased one night at their dock and just relaxed for the rest of the day. It was windy, but it's almost always windy in Pittsburg.

The next morning we heard from one of our other boats that were due to go to Benicia that they weren't coming because of a small craft advisory and their boat leaks a bit and they didn't want to take the chance of getting their boat wet on the inside. We listened to the weather report as we always do and didn't hear a thing about a small craft advisory. So off we went. We should have stayed where we were.

We left Pittsburg and within a few minutes we were in some pretty rough water. Okay it was the worst water I've ever experienced. We aren't novices at boating so we continued on. The further we got into Suisun Bay the worse the water became. The photograph below will give you an idea of what a large body of water we traversed. We came from the top of this photograph under the bridge and into Benicia.
We were riding the tide out and the wind was coming directly at us. Large rollers coming at us and the bow of the boat would be all you would see and then the boat would then drop to the water. Bam. The bow would go up and then bam, the bow would hit the water. We did this for nearly two hours. We finally made it to Benicia and we both wanted to kiss the ground when we tied up and got off the boat. One thing we found out though is we know how to secure things prior to sailing. Nothing was broken. What a way to start our bay cruise.

Tomorrow: Benicia and beyond