Lessons in California

San Diego Bay on a Saturday morning. The fog lifting off the Golden Gate. A houseboat idling through a Delta slough. California's boating covers more ground, and more kinds of water, than most countries manage. Down south, the harbors of San Diego Bay and the marinas of Marina del Rey stage trips out to the Channel Islands National Park, a remote archipelago of secluded anchorages and thick wildlife. The central coast is wilder and shorter on protected harbors; it belongs to experienced mariners.

San Francisco Bay is one of the world's great sailing grounds: strong, reliable wind, the Golden Gate Bridge as a course mark, and well-equipped marinas in Sausalito, Alameda, and San Francisco proper. Push east and the water changes character entirely: the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta sprawls across more than 1,000 miles of navigable waterways, a freshwater maze of sloughs, islands, and river towns like Rio Vista and Stockton where powerboaters, houseboaters, and anglers can lose a whole summer.