I’m still behind on pics and stories for the blog. We left Antioch Marina on Tuesday September 3rd after spending the holiday weekend in the marina. During our stay there, we were able to drive down to Mountain View (San Jose area) and visit David’s elderly auntie. Her birthday was Monday, so we were able to take her out for a celebration meal at The Outback. Can you believe–she’s 91 and never had a blooming onion before? The weather was quite dramatic with thunderstorms passing through on Sunday and Monday. Nothing like having the tallest masts in the marina during thunderstorms. Luckily no lightening.
When we arranged to visit the Antioch marina, we thought it was a great location for staging our car and getting to-and-from the Bay area. The Amtrak station is a short walk from the marina and though there is only limited shopping within walking distance of the marina, our plans for our extended stay in the Delta are to visit Antioch every two or three weeks (ok, maybe only once a month) and use the car to visit all the usual shopping spots. We already knew from our visit to the Delta in 2010 that we can buy groceries within walking distance of a dock or anchorage in a couple of different locations throughout the Delta.
I scoped out the Antioch Marina on the charts and Google Earth. The dockmaster told me which slip we’d be in as visitors and where it was. I saw the slip—an end tie just beyond the fuel dock with a row of normal slips between. Looking at the size of everything, I though “oh, those are 30 ft slips between the visitors dock and the fuel dock. On the other side they’re a little bigger, must be 40 ft slips. That makes sense, a 75 ft visitors dock.
Upon arrival at the narrow marina entrance, all I could think was “this is a marina for munchkins” because it was tiny! Those 30 ft slips? They’re 20 ft slips. Who ever heard of 20 ft slips??? Seriously. The end tie is shorter than Mahdee. I had a few heart-beat patter-patter moments getting Mahdee turned into the teeny, tiny little fairway and tied up to the slip. Thank goodness it was a turn to port and port side tie up because Mahdee and I do very well with those. Not so great on starboard tie up due to prop walk issues.
After we were tied in, I wondered if the marina would kick us out—after all, we were taking up a lot of the width of a 35-40 ft fairway with our 15 ft beam and boats needed to come and go by us. Later, the marina manager said “no problem” so we just went with it. Everyone was friendly and we enjoyed Antioch a lot.
The final word on Antioch marina? Lilliputian.
