Micbloo wrote:

H'mm, there was a real 'cruise ship' heading out of the bay while we were
passing
Alcatraz, but that was a modern slab-sided thing that looked like an
apartment
building that floats.

Yeah, that was the one I saw. BTW, can you go all the way up to Sacramento
by water?

Yes, or to Stockton. There are deep water channels to both. There's a deep water
cut channel to Sacramento, west of the Sacramento River north of Rio Vista; ships
can take the San Joaquin River itself all the way to Stockton; the two rivers
split at Antioch. Sacramento loads a lot of rice in the port, while Stockton used
to have the Navy Ammo station at Rough and Ready Island, so both routes can take
fairly large ships.

I was checking my AAA atlas last night and didnt realize how close
Sacramento was to SF.

If you'd just come into state a bit earlier and stuck around a bit longer, you too
could have run for governor;-) It takes about an hour/hour and a half from the
East Bay/SF to Sacramento by car, via I-80. We took about 10 hours by ship, but
that's at a max. of 8.5 knots or so, with some dawdling waiting for the tugs to
bring some press types out to us who had to climb aboard by rope ladder, and then
swing us around in the turning basin for docking (we entered the Port with our
dock to our port, but our gangways were on the starboard side, so they spun us
around and we backed alongside the dock).

And now, I think my off-topic posts have been patiently indulged by the other NG
readers long enough, so I'd better quit.

Guy