DISCOVERY BAY FROM THE WATER Looking Behind the Houses into This Charming Community
	JULY/AUGUST 2005

by Don Huntington
Photos by Russell Byrne

I’ve been attracted by the call of seascapes, twisting waterways, and sunlit margins of land and water for as long as I’ve been alive. My grandfather was a lighthouse keeper on the wave-tossed shores of Lake Erie before I was born. He died when I was little more than a baby, but I have early recollections of wonderful trips down to the Presque Isle Coast Guard Station with my grandmother. She would visit with the men there, some of whom still remembered Frank Huntington from his lighthouse keeping days. I would stand by the waterfront, watch the boats sail through the channel, past the East Jetty, out of the bay, and into the unbounded expanse of the lake that lay beyond.

I developed a love for the water and a romantic affection for anything to do with boating. My father left us when I was too young to remember his face. We didn’t have money for anything much beyond food and clothing — and nothing fancy in either of those areas. During the 17 years I lived at home we took exactly one vacation. Hardly ever did I set foot on a boat.

Boat People
Before moving to Antioch, my family and I lived for eight years on an old houseboat in Redwood City. It was an elegant old tub, but it did have a 120 HP Lehman Diesel in the engine room and a real pilothouse. We brought the Jubilee up to the Delta four or five times, visiting the marinas at Pittsburg, Rio Vista, Sacramento, and Bethel Island.

I was scratching an itch I had been putting up with for years. But one day my wife said, “Don, I want to move!” “Where?” I asked. “Ashore!” I had to make a choice between wife and boat and that’s how I ended up in a land-locked East County subdivision. After moving into the area I gradually became aware of Discovery Bay and realized that here was a community in which people like my wife and I could live a life of glorious compromise. She could have her comfortable home with things like closets and furniture, while I could have a boat tied up a few dozen steps away. I never imagined that I would ever myself be able to buy a home on deepwater in Discovery Bay. My attitude towards the place was like the line from The Philadelphia Story, “The prettiest sight in this pretty world of ours is that of the privileged classes enjoying their privileges!”

On my infrequent visits to Discovery Bay I really was able to enjoy the sight of the people “enjoying their privileges” without so much as a twinge of envy. It has never bothered me that some people were able to enjoy nice things that I didn’t own myself. I believe the only way any of us can really enjoy our own “nice things” — and I do have a lot of these — is to be absolutely cheerful about anybody enjoying even nicer things.

The problem that really did bother me, however, is that I wasn’t able to see the “privileged” people of Discovery Bay actually enjoying their “privileges” because the neighborhoods around the bays all are designed with their backs to the road. All of the beautiful cigarette boats, cruisers, ski boats, shiny little personal water craft, and stately yachts were hidden from sight by the beautiful homes that crowd the bays so that only people who belonged to the community could ever see what the waterways actually look like.

Birth of a Literary Idea
Over a year ago a friend said to us, “You should do a story about the Discovery Bay Marina.” I said, “I don’t know what I would write about. Then I had a sudden inspiration. I realized that I wanted to do an article called, “Discovery Bay from the Water.” The photographer and I would go out in a boat and just cruise around the Bay taking pictures of the homes and the boats that we passed.

It occurred to me that a lot of us who live in East County would be glad to see what it’s like on the other side of those homes and get a satisfying idea of what the bays and channels of Discovery Bay are really like. People would enjoy reading the article. Of course, doing the article would require me to take a boat ride though Discovery Bay myself, and that was a good thing as well.

It took a year and a half before the confluence of weather, schedule, and availability of a boat finally took place. But they really did come together in a wonderful fashion. Richard & Marion Pontus are East County realtors who are long-time residents of Discovery Bay. They own a house on deep water. They are living the life that I could dream about. Richard three boats down on the docks behind his house. The three vessels are like the bears in the Goldilocks story — father size, mother size, and little baby size. In this case, however, the daddy bear is a real behemoth of a boat — a 71-foot houseboat with the appropriate name, “It’s Good to Be King.”

Besides the houseboat, Richard had some kind of medium-size boat covered in canvas and riding on a floating dock behind his house. The boat we actually went out in for the article, however, was a nifty little Zodiac that he had just purchased. The tiny vessel had a hi-speed fiberglass hull, a con station amidships, and seating fore and aft for passengers. It was a toy to catch the imagination of any man who loved things having to do with the water — a joy to look at and a lot of fun to ride in.

We stowed what little gear we had, climbed aboard, Richard started up the outboard, and we embarked on our great adventure. The weather was very accommodating with light breezes, and clear views of water, docks, and homes. Rising in the background, depending upon the direction we looked, Mount Diablo or hillsides full of twirling windmills basked in the spring sunshine.

A Voyage of Discovery
Our little cruise through the Discovery Bay waterways fulfilled my expectations. I confirmed some things that I had imagined to be true; others things surprised me.

It’s a Big Confusing Place — Three minutes after leaving the dock I began to wish that I had brought with me a map of the area. Discovery Bay is a tightly interlocking region of larger bays and smaller inlets. I don’t even know how many bays there actually are — I think about nine. However, if you counted as a bay every space between two “points,” then there are somewhere around 20 of these. I don’t have a good sense of direction and confusion set in almost at once.

Even Richard, who has been in Discovery Bay longer than some of the bays themselves, got a little disoriented sometimes. A couple times he would look around and say something like, “I think we’re over one bay from where I thought we were.” No doubt boaters quickly learn the details of their own bay and learn the routes from their home to fast water, but might not ever get into all the nooks and crannies of the Discovery Bay system.

Mount Diablo supplies one towering aid to navigation since even when we didn’t know exactly what bay we were in, we could always look up and figure such things as “The marina is that way.”

It’s an Amazingly Quiet Place — As we passed by a woman walked partway down the stairs in front of a palatial home, sat down, and waved to us as we passed. During the 2 1/2 hours that we cruised through the bays, that was the only person we saw who was apparently enjoying the beautiful house that she was in. And even she seemed to behave in a tentative way, as though she was somebody’s friend or relative, staying the place while the owners were out. Also, only a few of all the beautiful and expensive watercraft we saw, were actually in operation.

Our trip through the channels of Discovery Bay raised the same question in my mind that I always had when we lived in Peninsula Marina in Redwood City. “Where are all the people?” I always imagined that if a people with beautiful boats would spend a lot of time boating; people with beautiful homes would spend a lot of time in the sunshine enjoying their homes. But it never seems to be the truth. In Redwood City, for example, we lived for eight years across a channel from a lovely 45-foot Chris Craft that, during the eight years we lived there, never moved from its dock.

It’s a Place Where People Know How to Live the Good Life — For a person raised and reared in the lower economic echelons of society, Discovery Bay provides an amazing showcase of beautiful homes. Most of them have steps leading down to floating docks, with some kind of watercraft tied up to them. Many of the docks had beautiful boats — from large aft-cabin mini-yachts to sleek cigarette boats. Some of the homes also had beautiful yards with patios covered by elegant shade structures. Many of the homes had verandas and second or even third-floor balconies.

The words from an old poem leaped to my mind a number of times as I looked at these beautiful places:

A place to love in, —live, —for aye
If we too, like Tithonus
Could find some God to stretch the gray
Scant life the Fates have thrown us

I was amazed by the variety of design of the homes. I didn’t study the matter carefully but my impression was that every dwelling was a custom home. No “cookie-cutter” effect that I ever once noticed.

It’s a Good Place to Get to Know Your Neighbors
Houses crowd along the Discovery Bay waterfronts like wildebeests around a waterhole in a time of drought. It would probably be amazing to a person who knew about community design how the various properties joined and interlocked with one another. One resident told me that the community was a bad place for a hermit. He also added that the density of the housing ensured that you would always get to know your neighbor.

Some people wouldn’t find this kind of density to be very charming. However, to a gregarious person like me, the neighborly relationships that are guaranteed by the closeness of the homes and the openness of the social environment would be a welcome alternative to my own life in the tract home that I live in. I open the garage door remotely as I come and go. Our HOA takes care of the yard. I don’t know the names of neighbors who live 50 yards away.

I decided that I’m going to move to Discovery Bay next year. I’m going to buy a home on the deep water. A boat will be tied up to my dock. This is just a dream right now, but sometimes dreams come true. Maybe I’ll scratch that itch for good!

(Note that Marion Pontus wrote about their life and their houseboat in an article called, “Beside Peaceful Waters” in the last issue of 110° Magazine.)