Rikki-tikki-tavi... the Napa River

The Napa River

Rikki-tikki-tavi enjoys the scenic views of modest shoreside homes, each with their own dock, as he nears the city of Napa. Many people who’ve lived in Northern California their entire lives are completely unaware that one can take a boat all the way into the center of Napa, a tourist destination high on everyone’s list, and walk to the new Copia Center in the heart of this world-famous wine-growing region.

In fact, the river is navigable for 13 miles from the Vallejo-Mare Island Causeway to the turning basin at the 3rd Street Bridge. Passengers pay a pretty price to traverse aboard smaller cruise vessels, one of which tied up within sight of our perch atop the yard trailer. We also enjoyed a spectacular thunder-and-lightning show with a lunar eclipse from our “sky room”.

The Railroad Bridge is always up...

unless there is a train! Just around this last bend is the Napa Valley Marina, mecca for multihullers needing to work on their boats. It’s rather like a Hotel California though– one checks in but never leaves. In fact, they took a backhoe to a trimaran the morning we were hauled to make room for us! Apparently, it doesn’t pay to skip out on your rent!

We’ve arrived at the Guest Dock at Napa Valley Marina. We are scheduled to be hauled tomorrow and a dry survey will be conducted during our week of dry-side living.

We are very glad we installed our new Airhead Toilet, a composting system, just before we left Sacramento, since it will allow us avoid having to climb down an extension ladder for midnight visits to the marina restroom a quarter of a mile away from our yard slot. Along with more bottom paint, we will be removing the large, heavy brass throughull dedicated to overboard discharge and patching the hull. No pumpouts! No 30 gallons of effuent sloshing around in the forepeak! Yippee!

This is our roughed-in installation. Our head area gets very narrow, so we modified the stirring handle to a socket and ratchet assembly. We will patch the holes in the bulkhead where the Henderson manual pump was mounted. Our Lavac head will find a new home aboard a Pacific Seacraft 37 yawl.

The haulout...