San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Serene delta endures as another place, time
I just spent a couple of days in another world, right in the heart of California. This is the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which is as close — and as far away — from the state’s big cities as you can imagine.
You can see the edge of the delta from a BART train heading toward Pittsburg. Mount Diablo, at the center of East Bay suburbia, is visible everywhere in the delta.
But the delta is far, far away from the booming Bay Area.
Last Sunday, I stopped for directions on a levee road only 15 minutes from an interstate highway. There was a weary-looking pickup truck parked on the side, and an old man fishing in a quiet waterway called Little Potato Slough. He had a Coors Lite at hand and looked half asleep. There was no sound but the wind and nothing to see but tule marshes. If there is any such place as the boondocks, this was it.
On the other hand, the delta is a playground, full of speedboats and Jet Skis; fast kids from the city and old men fishing. It is riverside mansions and collapsing shacks. Everything from asparagus to fine wine is produced in the delta.
I’ve been fascinated by the delta for a long time. I’ve prowled its back roads, steered houseboats up winding sloughs, and even had a sailboat based for awhile on Ryer Island, reached by a ferry called Real McCoy. It’s part of state Highway 84 and is a rarity. Until a couple of years ago, it was the only state highway that closed down while the ferry crew had lunch.
This time was a bit different. The Sailor Girl and I stayed on a houseboat that remained docked for a couple of quiet days. The world was out there, just over the levee.
One afternoon, we got a ride on a luxurious yacht, the Miss 102, 60 feet long, 62 years old, a classic, built by the Stephens Bros. in Stockton. The boat now belongs to political consultant Rusty Areias.
We sailed the boat down from the King Island Marina, turned east and then down on the broad San Joaquin River about an hour or so to a dock on the smaller Calaveras River just on the outskirts of Stockton.
A very special passenger came aboard: Dick Stephens, who is 97, the patriarch of the delta, who ran the Stephens Bros. company for years. Stephens Bros. was founded by two of his uncles in a Stockton backyard in 1902. Their first boat was a sailboat named Dorothy. It was a surprise for a backyard boat. The Dorothy was sleek, handsome and beautifully built. It attracted a lot of attention and orders for more boats.
Not long afterward, Stephens Bros. moved the operation to the Stockton Channel, at the head of navigation on the San Joaquin.
The company built hundreds of boats and a reputation for quality. Its boats ranged from workboats to minesweepers to beautiful yachts. By the time Dick Stephens took over, at the end of World War II, the company was famous.
After a while, the company specialized in luxurious motor yachts, custom-built. All were built of wood, carefully, only the best. Other boats in their class — Chris-Craft, for example — were mass-produced. But everyone who has owned a wooden boat knows they require constant maintenance, like anything beautiful. The newer fiberglass boats were cheaper to build, easier to maintain. It was the difference between a Chevy and a Cadillac. The market changed, and Stephens Bros. launched its last wooden boat in 1974. It went out of business in 1987.
Stephens boats are collector’s items now, and the best of them will be at the annual Stephens rendezvous next weekend at the Village West Marina on Fourteen Mile Slough on the north end of Stockton.
The Miss 102 sailed slowly up the San Joaquin on its river voyage the other afternoon, past Rough and Ready Island, close to downtown Stockton. Dick Stephens pointed out the site of his old yard, the buildings where he built the classic vessels. The place looked abandoned, empty. There was an ironworks, and the old Colberg boatyard, gone, all gone. But the north bank is slowly changing from the industrial past to something new.
“There’s where we were,” Stephens said. “It’s completely different now.”
Stockton has been a hard-luck town. It was badly affected by the recession that started in 2007, and the city was in bankruptcy for three years.
But when the lateafternoon sun hits the riverfront just right, lighting up the trees in the park on the north bank and the 1910 tan and red Hotel Stockton, and the nearby office buildings, Stockton looks like the handsome river port it once was.
And that’s another delta surprise.