Dawdling The Delta ... Doo Dah, Doo Dah

Owl Harbor

This year our July 4th plans included fun friends, a trip up the delta, sailing, fireworks, adventure, wildlife, trying new things. We decided to spend Friday the 3rd traveling up to Owl Harbor.  We picked the early tide, haha, 10:30am. We headed up the Carquinez Straight, past Pittsburg and Antioch, all the way up the San Juaquin River to Sevenmile Slough, where Owl Harbor is protected by the levee.
  Owl Harbor is a cool little Marina, they have wonderful new facilities. The showers are all granite. The people are awesome, and so friendly. They have a garden and give everyone tomatoes, squash, eggs, and they have bikes available if you want to go for a ride. They have campsites available too.
  There was an array of wildlife. There was a bunch of big bass out there teasing the fisherman as the fished the Seven Mile Slough. There were a couple of birds that would hover, and then swoop down and CRASH into the water, it never missed while I was watching.
  Dave and Kelly have 2 Badfish Stand Up Paddleboards, inflatable ones to boot, just like what ones we have been looking at but different brand. We took advantage of the opportunity to try them out. They are low profile, RED, not hard as a rock. Roxi and DrifterDude jumped on board before we did. Every time we would get close together they would trade boards. The boards felt very stable yet soft whenever I dropped to my knees. They were alot of fun.
  We decided to go for a bike ride over to Pirates Lair, Moores Riverboat area. Cap'n Carey and I rode the bikes all the way there, and met up with Kelly, Dave, and Leslie, in her truck. We decided to go back to Spindrift for lunch. After lunch we threw the bikes in Leslie's truck, and she gave us all a ride back to the marina. - to be honest the wind was ripping so hard Dave rode my bike to Spindrift, Thanx a million Dave. And a huge thanx to Leslie, for giving us all a ride back to the boats.
 Sunday morning rolled around and it was time to go stick our nose in another direction.  We left Owl Harbor at 11:30am. The tide was getting ready to start coming in.
When we got to big water, the San Jauquin River had some pretty big white capping going on, so we tucked behind the tulle islands that run by Spindrift Marina, on Brannon Island.
  We raced, haha, across the San Joaquin River by light #47, and ducked into Potato Slough. We had discussed staying in 1 of the 3 'bedrooms'. There were a bunch of boats still in bedroom 1, so we tootled over to bedroom 2, there was plenty of room there. A couple of boats still left over from the 4th of July, and they didn't look like they would be hanging around much longer.
 Using the chart above, we went from my index finger to near my thumb. Bedroom 2 is just under the word 'slough' above my thumb.  We nosed in and dropped our main CQR anchor, then reversed our way out and dropped our stern anchor. The Cap'n rowed to shore to secure a bowline to shore, and  once we were adjusted we sat really well all week. The adventure continues.

bunkmate