I'm delinquent in posting, but as I tell the story I'll bet everyone will understand why.

Spencer, Tara, Heather, Bean and I went up to the boat for the weekend of August 8. We picked the boat up in Bethel Island where the finishing touches had just been put on my new inverter install and ran down to my new temporary slip at the Pittsburg Municipal Marina. The boat was running great, but there were still a couple of gremlins in the electrical install, so we decided to spend the night and get an early start for our intended exploration of The Meadows state park after I grabbed some parts from the local hardware.

It was a beautiful run up the North Fork of the Mokelumne River. We found out that the swing bridge north of Guisti's is only tended 9AM to 5PM, so that made us feel lucky that we had waited for Saturday morning.

After we cleared the initial no wake zone, I throttled back up to cruise on the way up to the long no wake zone that protects the entrance to The Meadows state park. Just as I had come off the throttles because we were nearing the no wake zone and because I knew that I ought to start watching for shallow water we heard a huge crash. I was skippering from the flybridge and thus didn't notice the charted island that was invisible on the outgoing tide. We had completely struck something - most likely a tree on its side below the water. I think the smallest depth sounding was .9 feet... Not good

I gently worked the boat off the island and then immediately went below to see if we had taken any hull internal damage at the shaft logs or to the cutlass bearing mounts and to make sure that we were not taking on any water. We were ok, but I was shaken. We quickly assessed what to do next and Spencer recommended that we stop short and head up Locke slough as it was closest to civilization instead of continuing on to The Meadows anchorage.

We didn't vibrate too badly in gear at idle, but the transmissions were making the standard Bayliner/Hurth complaint.

In the spirit of helping others avoid this fate, the island/snag in question's southern terminus is at 38 14.772 N 121 29.814 W. Looking at the depths, one should proceed carefully from east of the Delta Cross Channel on north...