in 06 prior to heading to Mexico. We sailed and motored up the coast from Dana Point but we only spent a few days in the bay and headed across to the Napa River. The Napa River really isn't. It's a tidal estuary but it goes all the to Napa Valley. We stayed at the Napa Valley YC dock but I bet they would take non YC members as well. We rented a car and "did the wine country" for a few days and then headed back down to the bay. As Long as you travel the river at LOW TIDE it's a piece of cake. As soon as the water level drops a bit the "river" is completely viewable. At high tide it just looks like part of the bay. My Garman Chart Plotter was extremely accurate. From back at the mouth we sailed across the bay to the Petaluma River and sailed, make that motored, up to the small town of Petaluma where we stayed on the city dock for a week or so. The county fair was going on so we "did the fair" which was fun. The town was a hoot with plenty of restaurants and things to see. We motored back down, again at low tide, to the San Joaquin river and headed through the straits at slack tide and headed for Sacramento. We continued up the San Joaquin to a place called "Three Rivers Reach" and stayed there at anchor for a dew days until the 4th of July fire works show (which was huge with hundreds of boats of all sizes arriving days prior)and then headed back down a few miles to a slough and took it over to the Sacramento river. We headed up river all the way to Sacramento and stayed on the city dock for a few days seeing the city. Again, lots of restaurants, the train museum and sight seeing to be had. Our kids drove up with the granddaughters so we sailed back down the river a few miles where there was an outside bend, tossed out the bow and stern anchors on the outer edge of the turn and stayed at anchor a week. Then we headed back down to SF and knocked around the bay for a while. We had a great time and are looking forward to doing it again but after "Three Rivers Reach" we never saw another sailboat over 25 feet until we got back close to SF. Brendon has a 5.5 draft and is 50 feet over the water and we never had any trouble so I don't understand. There were a few bridges we had to wait for but the keeper opened them pretty quickly. All in all it was well worth the trip up. Now we're in San Diego for the season with a few boat projects on the books. We'll be heading back down south next season but would highly recommend a trip up into the Delta Area for as long as you can spare. The Delta is well worth the effort IMHO.