Adrenaline high!

This was supposed to be a leisure sail into the Sacramento river delta, yet it turned out to be quite some adventure! Weather forecast was W10-15kn increasing to 15-20kn in the afternoon, nothing to be worried about on our boat. I guess I didn't really appreciate the thermal effects around here, where a really strong westerly kicks up as soon as the Central Valley heats up. So the Central Valley forecast had temperatures around 95F in the forecast, really hot and early for the season and plus the San Francisco Bay being still cold. So quite a thermal gradient here! More about that later..
Anyways we set out and tucked in a reef just to be safe and went riding up the flood tide at 8-9kn over ground, woohoo. On the way we got passed by some of the boats racing the Delta Ditch run (but not too many :-)) And as soon as we turned the corner after the bridge things really heated up. The guy in front of us wiped out with his spinnaker and we quickly reefed the jib. So after passing Middle ground we decided to stop for extended lunch break behind one of the islands and wait for the tide to turn to get back home. As we took the sail down I suddenly noticed that the engine didn't have any power and all of a sudden we were drifting with the current towards some sandbanks. Oops. So we unrolled the jib and sailed to some more or less protected spot where we dropped the anchor.

Track through Suisun Bay

After things had settled down I took out my snorkel gear and dove below the boat to see what had happened. Visibility in the murky water was about 4 inch (=10cm) so it was hard so see anything. So I couldn't almost believe my eyes when I finally found where the prop was supposed to be and was staring at a bare propeller shaft instead! Somehow the locking nut must have come loose and we had simply lost our prop!
Meanwhile the wind had started kicking up and we were witness to numerous boats in the race wiping out, shredding spinnakers, plus quite some chatter on the radio on grounded boats, dismasting etc. Jikes! So how to get back home without engine, not even thinking about getting docked! We waited for the tide to subside somewhat and then went to the task getting the anchor up hand over hand. Also, we had put in the 2nd reef in the main and went hauling on the chain while the boat was sailing left and right with the main up. Finally the anchor broke out and we were on our way! On the way back not too many boats any more. The wind kicked up to sustained 25-30kn with some gusts around 35kn. With the 2nd reef in and only maybe 1/3 of the jib we still were able to make 5kn headway on some pretty decent tacking angles (see pic!). Kudos to Olin Stephens! The channel is pretty narrow and we ended up tacking a total of 37 times till we made the Benicia harbor entrance. Totally exhausted, we finally arrived at the harbor entrance, after some anxious moments under the bridge, where we had to tack in fickle winds to avoid being swept on the bridge towers.
Docking turned out to be quite easy, as the wind had finally come down a bit and we were merely coasting into our berth. So now I just have to figure out how to get a new prop on and then we can go out again!