Oh lord your ocean is so big..part 4

Or: into the big muddy.

With the San Rafael Richmond Bridge behind us, we could immediately see the shores of East San Rafael. This was of particular interest for me because I spent several summers working for Marin County Parks along this stretch of coastline, and every day at work I daydreamed about being out on the water in a boat. I’d imagined it as a kayak, or small canoe not a 1930’s fishing boat. As it happens I think I’ll be coming back down to this area with a kayak as the bottom is so shallow there that we didn’t want to get too close into shore. This was going to be a common theme for San Pablo Bay. It’s funny when you look at the bay from the bridge, or Highway 37 it seems so vast, and in a linear-2D way it is, but volumetrically there’s nothing to it. Our path was tightly proscribed because the charts list water depth at under 3 feet in most places. In some portions of our trip seabirds would be standing in the water a stones through away from our boat, while we seemed to be leagues from land. It’s a giant shallow puddle.
If you look at Marin on the map you’d think there would be a huge amount of seafront-boatish activity. It’s a big peninsula with several inlets from San Francisco bay, but because the water is so shallow, and the land so step, most of the coast line is barely developed. Other than Richardsons Bay there are precious few access points to Marin from the water. The land that was passing by the port side was dark, green and almost unblemished.
Gary and I were well into the swing of things by now. The throb of the motor and the gentle rocking of the boat lulled us into a state of quiet boredom. There was little current, and with the fog and haze, precious little to look at but the water. We put the boat on a heading, and wandered around the boat, cleaning, taking photographs of each other, and flipping through the chart book to plan future adventures.
The water had become glassy and reflected the sky above with a muddy fidelity. The haze on the land obscured the line between sea and sky. This led to a surreal few hours of humming along with almost no visual references. I spent the time poking at things and thinking of coffee. Gary explored how many places he could stand on the boat, the forward deck, the cabintop, the doghouse roof, etc…
Eventually, we realized we should start looking for the entrance to the Petaluma River. By dead reckoning from one duck blind to set of broken pilings (and there are a lot of both in San Pablo Bay) we spotted our first set of channel markers. Up at this end of the bay we began seeing fishing boats. Not the commercial ones we’d left in San Francisco in the morning, but little 1960’s and 70’s fiberglass speedboats with guys in camo and coolers sitting in the shallows waiting for a bite. I think we were as incomprehensible to them as they to us. In our slow, clapped out wooden boat, they would occasionally zip buy us at 3 times the speed. We’d wave to each other but the expressions on their faces were always of confused curiosity.
The sun was getting low in the sky now, we’d been on the water for 6 hours and we had just reached the mouth of the river. We wanted to get to the mooring by dark, because a) we’d never docked before, b) our navigation lights didn’t appear to work. We passed under the Highway 37 overpass and passed the Port of Sonoma Marina. Very quickly we dropped the fiberglass boats behind. They all turned in at Port of Sonoma. It was getting cold again, so we bundled up and stayed on deck. It was simply too noisy to be inside for long.
The River, while beautiful in it’s subdued way, is also slow to change. It would twist and curve, but always we’d be surrounded by banks of pickleweed and some sort of seagrass. Occasionally we’d see a rundown shack, but there was precious little to look at. So we’d stare at the coffee-with-cream colored water and look for evidence of shallow areas. We seemed to be making good time, passing odd outposts of human settlement such as Papas Tarvernas, which is a restaurant/bar/collection of rundown shacks and half-sunk boats. Out in the middle of a marshy section was a giant stucco mansion with palm-trees and private boat dock. It didn’t look finished as there were still stickers on the windows, but we also couldn’t see any access road. Maybe it’s someone’s weekend mansion getaway on the obscure Petaluma River, who knows? It just seemed weird to build such a house in the middle of nowhere. The rundown shacks (which Gary termed “Gracious Country Living”) were awesome. It was exactly the kind of thing I’d always assumed was down-river. It’s sort of like Mad Max/Thunderdome but in a marsh. Some people have wind generators and solar panels, other people have caving in roofs and derelict sailboats. I wanna live there.
All too soon the sun started to set behind Mt. Burdell and we were navigating up river by reflection off the water. It’s freaking dark out there. We were getting close, as the level of large weird stuff was beginning to accumulate on the banks and I could see the 101 overpass. There several boats, and half-finished boats up on blocks at the edge of the river with no settlement nearby. I couldn’t wait to see this stuff in daylight, but now we had to get to the dock. We throttled back as we passed the marina and went through the swing bridge for the railroad. From here on in there was lots of development along the river. Warehouses, townhomes, pilings and gravel loading conveyors. In a matter of minutes we could see the welcoming lights of the dock. My mom and dad were on it waiting with muffins and hot cider, bless their souls. We pulled in clumsily and thunked to a stop. I killed the motor and we tied off and squared everything away. After some refreshments, and chit-chat with my parents we began unloading all the supplies we’d brought, put the canoe back in the office and we were home. A long uneventful but highly fulfilling trip. Now we begin the repairs and further adventures. The first big one on the calendar is the Delta Meadows camping trip with Gary’s friends the Norstad brothers.