We cruised up Little Potato Slough and turned into Potato Slough and found a place to spend the night. We eased the houseboat up next to the levee and threw out the anchor. It was dark when we stopped so we did not fully understand where we were at that time. We spent a restless night as we were periodically rocked by boat wakes and just getting used to the new environment.
When we woke up on Thursday - Thanksgiving day, we found that the levee had a road on top and inside were thousands of acres of farm land. Some of the farm land was covered in water with hundreds if not thousands of birds settled in for the night. The morning fog made the scene perfect.
We also rented a skiff to give us more flexibility to cover more of the delta quickly as well as go back and forth to the shore when necessary. We tied the skiff off to the side of the houseboat and it did just fine. By the way... see those clouds on the horizion... more on that later.
The more we looked around the more we saw birds - thousands of birds... perhaps millions of birds. The delta must be the winter home for every bird on the west coast. At time, the sky was black with flocks of birds on wing.
One of my favorite pasttimes is cruising marinas and looking at boats. There were dozens of marinas along the delta waterways and I took a few pictures of boats I liked.
We saw an old Krogen Manatee in one of the marinas. The Manatee is the boat with the faded blue trim. That boat is one of the first that got me on the cruising craze. Way back in 1982 Susanne and I made a special trip to Long Beach to see the Manatee in person. It has so much room inside for a 36-foot boat. At that time they were selling for about $100k. A lot of money at the time. Nowdays they still sell for $100K. They proved to be a popular design.
We went poking around the sloughs and always saw boats anchored off to the side. I really liked this pilothouse trawler and hope to someday have something like it.
We used the skiff to ferry the dog back and forth to shore for dog walks. Worked perfect.
We each took turns cruising the houseboat. Kinda big and not easy to steer. Susanne made it look easy.
I had a lot of fun cruising. Rascal was very interested in where we were going and what was happening with the boat.
Click here to go to California Delta Houseboat Trip Page Three