About 10 years ago when I owned Terrapin, a Ranger 33, my family did a cruise-in to Petaluma.
From Alameda, the trip is decent. We took an extra long weekend off to make this trip, leaving on a Friday night and anchoring off of China Camp (a great anchorage). The Saturday morning we were up at the crack of dawn motoring up to the entrance of the Petaluma River.
San Pablo Bay, despite it’s vastness, is actually very shallow in spots. I did a good deal of research before making this trip and read the importance of adhering to the channel markers. It is also important to make the trip at high tide, which we did.
There is one draw bridge prior to Petaluma.
We stayed a night or two, I can’t remember. We planned on sailing from Petaluma to Alameda in one day.
We left early ( I believe on a Monday) and were nearing the mouth of the river. I had gone down to use the head and Sherine had taken the helm.
Upon returning, I came up to the cockpit and looked around…and almost immediately said: “You need to be over there!!!!”. Within, what seemed like seconds, we screeched to a halt.
We were towing our dinghy with some line which floated. However, while trying to reverse out of our situation, we essentially sucked the line into the prop….the motor stopped.
I believe it was Labor Day weekend or later at during the trip. The Bay’s never warm but it was especially cold this time. I proceeded jump in and and cut the rode off the prop.
It was much later when we hauled the boat out for bottom paint that we realize the strut had been bent in this ordeal.
Ten or fifteen minutes after the grounding while deciding what to do, a power boat came speeding by looking at us…seconds later it was spitting out spouts of mud as it tried to strong-arm itself out of it’s grounding.
We tried for a half of an hour to get out but were unsuccessful. We call an emergency vessel service. $800 to have us pulled out. Holy Cow! They did give us a good idea of dropping out the anchor into the middle of the channel and wait for the tide to some in. Late evening, the tide turned and we proceeded to winch ourselves out.
I ended up taking an extra day off of work and rather than make way to Alameda under darkness, we got a slip at a nearby marina for the night.
