On New Year's weekend, Barbara Flores went three days without sleep, and not
because she was partying.
Flores and other anxious residents of Sherman Island, on the western edge of the
Delta, spent the opening days of 2006 battling one of the biggest floods they'd
ever seen.
Waters rose to the crest of the island's levees. Wind-whipped spray from
crashing waves blew over the levee in a stinging fusillade, threatening to flood
the island.
"We came close. Real close," said Flores, manager of Sherman Lake Resort on the
island's western tip. "The only reason it didn't flood is because the wind
stopped."
The Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers converge at Sherman Island, putting Flores
in the cross hairs of the Delta's biggest wind and waves. This makes Sherman
Lake Resort, humble and weather-worn though it is, one of the world's top
windsurfing destinations.
But the resort has ...