Instead of water skis and riverboats lining the launch area at Louis Park, a group of oddly shaped vessels waited near where the park meets the San Joaquin River, ready to compete in Stockton’s most unconventional boat race.
First held in 2009, the Bathtub Boat Race is the kind of event you’d expect in Stockton, said Ryan Tolentino, who has competed in almost every installment of the city’s annual bathtub race since its second year.
“This is Stockton,” said Tolentino before bursting into laughter as he looked at the nearly 100 spectators spread across the western lawn of Louis Park to see the lineup of homemade vessels compete on the water.
Most spectators lined the riverbank, perched in lawn chairs or sprawled across the grass as they waited for the race to begin. At the top of the lawn overlooking the boat launch area, a trio of friends, Robert Cisneros, Henry Hesia and Donald Stewart, had settled in to watch the activity below.
While Cisneros and Hesia were familiar with the race, having come in years past, this was Stewart’s first time watching it. But it didn’t take much for him to want to come out.
“It’s a good event — a good family event. [It’s] good to come out, hang out and watch people fall in the water,” laughed Stewart, 54.
The banter between the three friends would later be interrupted by Tim Jackson, one of the unofficial organizers of the race, as made announcements to the growing crowd.
“Welcome to the 17th annual bathtub race,” exclaimed Jackson, before taking a beat.
“Some of you don’t have children that old!” he added.
To the vessels, some with multiple participants on board, Jackson announced the general rules of the race through a portable mic he carried for most of the event.
“To the buoy and back!” he yelled, pointing to a floating marker. “You must go around it!”
Earlier, Jackson had been running back and forth from the starting area, wearing a homemade floatie made of used plastic soda bottles that he would eventually wear as part of his racing get up.
Just minutes before race time, Shelley Zavala was giving her confident grandson Rickey Zavala a pep talk, pumping her feet in the air to demonstrate how he should use his white flippers as the “motor” for their inflatable vessel.
“That’s right, you’re a fish,” she told the 13-year-old. Their vessel, the “Alien UFO,” was started the night before and finished near the parking lot of the launch area.
Using an oversized float they were planning to discard at a recent yard sale, their contraption was decked out in blue and yellow balloons, along with Shelley’s purple windshield sunshade, pulled from her car moments earlier.
The family’s first time at the bathtub race, Shelley said they went through with it just to give it a try.
“I just wanted him to experience it,” she said. “ I told him the plan and he just went along with it.”
With an unceremonious start, the vessels took off from the pier at roughly 1:02 p.m. Two minutes in, Tolentino was the first to paddle back.
His canoe-like vessel, made of discarded washing machine parts and other metal and aluminum, had won this year’s race.
He paddled back to Jackson, who was lying on his back after flipping over just after he had exited the pier.
Earlier, Christina Cordova had yelled to the bathtub racers from the sidelines, encouraging them to finish with shouts of “Stroke, stroke!”
When asked who she was cheering for, Cordova responded as if the answer was obvious, “everybody.”
Cordova, and a handful of others, have helped Jackson put on the race over the years. This year, Cordova said she helped Jackson hang up his handpainted signs across town.
“It’s different,” said Cordova after the race, as to why so many people turn up. “They don’t know what to expect”
Plus, it’s “just fun,” she said. “You see people laughing, that’s what we need.”
