NECESSARY BOAT EQUIPMENT: Dinghy, bow and stern anchors ready to deploy, boarding ladder, depth sounder, reefable sails, VHF marine radio, cell phone, paper and electronic G.P.S. charts.
NECESSARY SAFETY EQUIPMENT: All U.S. Coast Guard required equipment for near-shore and inland boating, including inflatable P.F.D.'s and tethers for everyone.
SUGGESTED EQUIPMENT: A.I.S. on chart plotter, iPhone or iPad with Navionics or other G.P.S. charts, wide-brimmed hats with ties or clip-ons to keep them from blowing away, long-sleeved shirts to minimize U.V. exposure plus layer of sweater and warm jacket that can be worn for cold areas and stripped off for warm regions, good polarized sunglasses with croakies to keep them on your head, gloves for handling lines and keeping hands warm as needed, tiller pilot or auto-pilot, cockpit dodger.
There is good 3G, 4G, and cellular reception all over most of the bays and much of the rivers and Delta, so you can bring iPhones, iPads, and 3G-enabled Kindles with you and they will connect in most anchorages. Wifi is much less available.
OTHER SUGGESTIONS: I carry my dinghy fully inflated and hoisted by the bow painter up the backstay of my Ranger 29. This is very secure with side-lines for balance. I've had it all over the bays in as high as 30-knot winds and heavy seas with no problems, and it adds negligible drag to the boat. I carried my inflatable the same way on my C&C 34 from San Francisco to La Paz, Baja Mexico up to twenty miles offshore in high winds and seas during the 2010 Baja Haha with no problems. (Click for my YouTube documentaries SF to Cabo and Baja Haha and Cabo to LaPaz.) It's an easy way for a small sailboat to keep an inflatable ready for immediate deployment on the bays and rivers of the San Francisco region.
I use a Standard Horizon Matrix GX 2150 VHF radio connected to my Garmin GPSMap 421s chart plotter, which is connected to my tiller pilot. The radio and chart plotter are incredible technology bundles that show me graphic depth soundings, seafloor bottom types (for anchoring), tide and current data, A.I.S. data, etc. The tiller pilot gives a single-hander like me hands-free helming and anchoring with simple push-button control. My Ranger came with a fixed jib boom and jib furler for effortless single-handed tacking and jibing--especially handy on rivers.
If you are singlehanding, build as much convenience into your boat systems as possible, lead all controls to the cockpit to avoid having to reef sails at the mast, and use a tether whenever you are in the cockpit, which is almost always. I installed EzJax so the mainsail doesn't need to have the extra bunches tied off when reefed or when the mainsail is dropped.
I use a Manson Supreme as my primary anchor because it is a less expensive version of the Rocna, which I used on my C&C 34 in Mexico, which always set in one attempt, plus it has a slot along the shank that will help pull out a snagged anchor by the front end if needed. For secondary and stern anchors I use real Danforths (not knock-offs, which are unreliable).
Whenever possible, I get used consignment boat equipment from Blue Pelican Marine at Grand Marina in Alameda instead of West Marine. Way cheaper for same stuff!
TRANSITING THE BAYS: To go North from the South Bay, leave early in the morning on the last few hours of an ebb tide so that you can transit the Central Bay Slot at slack tide or on the start of a flood tide. Most important, do the crossing by noon to avoid the big winds that kick up during the afternoon and can make for a wet crossing. Plan to cross under the Richmond Bridge into San Pablo Bay near the start of a flood. Stay out of the deep channels when the big boys are maneuvering there, but use them to take full advantage of tidal boost. Currents run fastest over deep water, slower over shallow. If you have to sail against an opposing current, do so in shallower water where current runs more slowly. But keep your eyes on paper charts for depth detail (or zoom into deeper chart layers where the data is buried). Watch out for charted sunken ships and other hazards, and keep an eye on the depth sounder. The bays have so many shallow areas that it is easy to run aground.
To go from North to South in San Pablo Bay, do NOT try to use an ebb tide when winds pick up in the afternoon, and never if they are blowing hard before noon. They come in from westerly angles and create the nightmare known as wind against current over shallows. That means close frequency high waves with overfalls that will beat up your boat and make you very wet! Instead, start South on a waning flood, which results in wind and waves in the same direction. Do so in the morning if possible before the winds come up--you may have to motorsail for a while--and stay far East of the deep channel, following the 21-foot depth curve on a rhumb line just outside of Point Pinole. Watch out for the few charted sunken boats that may be in your path. When you pass Point Pinole, make another rhumb line to San Pablo Point and the Brothers. By then you'll have ebb flowing and helping you into the Central Bay. Then you might want to detour through Angel Island and Racoon Strait and wait for slack tide. Then you can make a quick perpendicular crossing of the Central Bay traffic channels to the SF Bay waterfront area and go screaming down the Slot toward the Oakland Bay Bridge on a comfortable dry flood boost and on into the South Bay.
As I said, avoid the deep channels when there is traffic. But also realize that the ferries that ply the Bay are catamarans, so they don't need deep channels. They run outside the channels close to the SF Bayfront, Angel Island, and in San Pablo Bay often close to the East shore--even closer than you would want to sail. So stay away from tanker, cargo, tug, and ferry wakes. If you get caught, take the waves on your bow quarter--not broadside.
THE VIDEO: Now it's time to watch a video of my North-South crossing from South Bay to Vallejo and back, with tips and demonstrations:
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