Favorite Destinations: China Camp

(This is the first in a series of posts highlighting great cruising destinations. If you’ve got any suggestions, contact me or weigh in with a comment and we’ll go from there.)

For as long as I’ve been sailing on the Bay, China Camp has been one of my favorite places to take the boat for a relaxing weekend–over the years we’ve probably gone there more than anyplace else. We first discovered it in the late 1990′s when we used to launch our Hobie 20 off the beach and into the warm San Pablo Bay waters, and have continued going there with every boat since then.

If you’ve never been, you’ll be amazed at what a wonderful cruising destination it is:

• It’s the first place in the Bay the fog burns off every summer morning.
• It’s the last place the fog forms in the evening.
• It’s sheltered from the afternoon seabreeze.
• It’s one of the quietest places on the Bay.
• The anchorage is huge, with great holding (thick mud) everywhere.
• You’re within dinghying distance of both a state park with miles of hiking trails and a county park (McNear’s) with barbecues and a swimming pool.
• It’s only about a 2-3 hour sail from Alameda, which means during the summer you can leave the dock after work and get there before sunset.

Furthermore, China Camp makes a great jumping-off point for longer trips where you need to catch a morning flood tide, either to Petaluma or further up the Delta.

First things first. China camp is on the West shore of San Pablo Bay at exactly 38.000°N, here:

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The anchorage is huge and extends from the McNears pier to the China Camp pier, but we’ve found the ideal spot to be about halfway between those two ends, about 300′ off the beach in about 8-10′ of water at low tide. The idea is to get close enough to the cliffs that you’re sheltered from the wind, but not so close that you’re stuck in the mud at low tide.

This is a relatively open anchorage and there are occasional wakes from the Vallejo ferries passing about 2 miles away, so it’s not the best place for a raft-up. If you’re going with other boats, be sure someone has a dinghy for trips between boats, to the shore, etc.

There’s also typically about a knot of current in China Camp, and it can run counter to the wind direction, which means you’ll find yourself overriding your anchor rode at least some of the time. For most boats it’s usually not a problem, but if you’re worried about an all-chain rode chewing up your topsides, you might consider anchoring fore-and-aft. Once the sun goes down, the anchorage is typically glass calm.

Perhaps the best thing about China Camp is that hardly anybody knows it’s there. On a typical summer weekend when the docks and moorings at Ayala Cove are packed, it’ll have maybe a dozen boats. The most we’ve ever seen was 28, and that was on Labor Day weekend, spread out over an anchorage almost a mile long. There’s always plenty of room at China Camp.