So we packed up the boat, the boy and headed to the Sacramento River Delta and launched at the county park near Rio Vista around 3 pm. Launching went well, the motor started right up and we backed out into the stream and the motor promptly stopped. After dinking around trying to start it up, while we drifted downstream about a quarter mile, we decided that, "Hey, it's a sailboat, lets sail." and pulled the motor up and cruised downstream. The wind was pretty good, I'm guessing a typical evening breeze for late summer in the Delta, maybe 10 kts or so. We sailed downstream into the current by this time, the part of the river has tidal influence, looking for a place to anchor. We peeked into a side channel outlet about 4.5 miles downstream of the launch but decided to head back to the north (upstream) end of the island formed by that side channel and anchored for the night. We had a pleasant evening looking at the stars, except the boy lost his knife overboard, and slept well. This was my wife's first night on the boat, the boy and I have spent a couple nights on other trips.
In the morning we sailed a little bit further south and then turned around to head back to the boat ramp. We did quite a bit of tacking into the current, but as we made our final approach to the ramp, (we'd lowered our main to de-power the boat and were under just the jib) we got caught in a back current that began moving us upstream of the launch. Fortunately, the boy was in a kayak already being towed along, and he was able to quickly paddle our line up to the dock and bring us in. All without the motor.
This is the second time I've sailed off the ramp without the motor working and I've found it really forces us to learn to sail.
The wife says she wants the motor running reliably before she goes again, though. 
On the way down, we explored a couple of barges anchored off a quarry and some dredging operations. We were surprised to see some sealions around the barge, one bull had hauled out onto the mooring buoy and protested our sail by.
