Mandeville '08

[zelatore]

Here in Northern California, the place to be for the 4th is Barron Hilton's (yes, Paris' grandfather and no, she does not attend) fireworks show at Mandeville point in the delta.

With the wind and high fuel prices, attendance seemed to be down quite a bit, maybe only 60-70% of normal. I shot these pics of some of the more interesting performance hardware while sitting on the company raft-up for about 15 minutes.

Note the lack of Donzis :confused: I'm a lonely guy out here flying the flag...Although I did have a couple people comment on my 22. :propeller:

Usually, Arneson makes an appearance with his big turbine Skater, but he didn't show this year. Maybe jet fuel is getting too expensive too.

[zelatore]

more pics

The 'Silver Bullet' is one of our clients. He's a former beer distributer and has three boats: A Skater cat called 'High Life'; the Scarab 'The Silver Bullet', and a 53 Carver 'Genuine Draft'.

I've noticed a theme. :)

I wish I had got a better shot of the orange Skater cat - it looked and sounded pretty serious.

[zelatore]

and still more pics

[zelatore]

Since I didn't take my Carver up this year I instead ran out to the raft-up in my 22 and stayed with some friends. Several of them of course wanted rides in the Donzi as it's pretty far outside their normal world of 8 to 20 knot motoryachts.

Of course, between the howling winds and all the boat traffic, it was a mess on the river but I did my best to accomodate everybody. One friend, an Israili now living in Napa, CA, commented "wow, that will rip the hair right off your chest!" after a particularly spirited run down the river. Every time I caught a little air I'd look over my shoulder at him in the back seat and he'd yell back "I'm still here!"

He never stopped smiling the whole time.

There were quite a few more sport boats out, but I only spent a few minutes shooting. Surprisingly, I only spotted 2 Baja; surprising as they have a dealer only a couple miles from here.