Sunday, December 23, 2013

Two of our adult kids, Shaylor & John III, came to Galveston to accompany us (and to help the "old folks") on the blue water cruise to Key West. We set off on Sunday morning with our newly purchased EPIRB, Satellite Phone, AIS and weather expert, Chris Parker subscription. Unfortunately, Chris Parker doesn't work on Sundays, so we conducted our own weather analysis. Bad move. At sundown, we reefed down to the first reef point as we had been told was a wise move for the night watches. Feeling pretty good about ourselves, we set the watch schedule of 2 hours each just before the wind picked up to the predicted 20 knots. Only it didn't stop there, but escalated to 25 to 30 knots with gusts to 39. Mariah was still sailing very nicely but the seas began to build to about 8 feet. That still wasn't too bad for Mariah, but then the rain started (where did that come from??). The guys reefed all the way down to the third reef point and rolled up the Genoa so that we were sailing on the Stay Sail, the reefed Main and the Mizzen. I was at the helm with everyone else in the cockpit watching the excitement. I must admit, I was a bit scared, but also quite thrilled. It was quite a roller coaster ride...until the Mizzen just EXPLODED behind my head. What a bang , like a cannon. Well, we were still fighting the squall and had to ignore the mizzen which continued to shred from front to back about a foot above the boom.

After about a half hour of such great excitement, I decided that I just had to go potty. While hanging for dear life in the head, the wind suddenly died and the next wave sent me airborne. I now know how it feels to be weightless, but I won't describe the rest of it. Suffice it to say, the sea swells stuck around longer than the squall. John decided that we needed to get moving to get some control over the swell and in the process of raising the Mainsail, found that we had ripped a hole in that sail too.

We were 50 miles out with 700 more to go. We felt that we just couldn't risk that many miles with two of our sails torn, so we headed back to shore, sailing all night to reach the Sabine Inlet, about 50 miles east of Galveston where we then began our trek down the IntraCoastal Waterway leading to New Orleans.

Christmas Eve - Change of Plans

We arrived at a nice little anchorage recommended by Active Captain, our tour guide computer program, called the "Oxbow" just south of Lake Charles, Louisianna just after sundown where we enjoyed a glass of wine and our survival. Christmas morning we spent enjoying pancakes for breakfast and marveling that Santa could actually deliver in the Oxbow. Here we planned our course down the ICW trying to find suitable anchorages along the way. It is no easy task as there is not much civilization between Galveston and New Orleans along the ICW. Mostly reeds, marshes and a scattering of dilapidated shacks bringing reminders of that long-ago movie, "Deliverance". Shudders experienced by all at the thought of going aground anywhere along here.
For the next 6 days, we motored, anchored in various locations, dodged barges, found docks in places like Morgan City ,Houma and under the LaRose bridge at somebody's well-lit dock. We even broke a bridge as one of the sides would not come down after we passed under it. We felt very sorry for all the cars left sitting there while we disappeared around the bend. But the last day was the most eventful of all, so I'll spend the most time with this description.

We left this lovely dock under the bridge and within 500 feet, we noticed that there was no water coming out of the engine's exhaust. As we putted along, the engine began to overheat, so we pulled off to the side of the canal, watching to make sure there was enough water not to go aground and John went down to the engine to check for trouble. He decided that it must be the sea water strainer, so he took that out, found some baby fish creatures in it and cleaned them out. He then primed the motor with more seawater which cooled the engine, we raised the anchor and off we went. After about 2 hours, it happened again. So, find a place to anchor, lower the anchor, get the bucket of water, clean the strainer, prime the engine, start the engine, raise the anchor, off we go. We did this 7 times during the course of the entire day. The barge captain of the "Captain Tom Brown" was very forgiving as we passed him, then anchored as he passed us, then repeated the effort several times. The kids got really good at the whole process...I fretted and made food. This happened for the 5th time while waiting to enter the Harvey Lock (we now had the process down to 10 minutes).

The Harvey Lock exits right into the Mississippi River at New Orleans. We made our entrance into the river, overheated, anchored, primed, up-anchored and had just begun moving down the river when the Coast Guard RIB with a 30 caliber machine gun on the bow pulled up next us, asked us to slow down and then asked permission to "board." Yikes! Yep, boarded by the Coast Guard in the middle of the Mississippi River at sundown. Well, once they boarded us, they had to do their entire "dance" and did a complete search of the boat looking for violations on safety, fire, life jackets, etc. Fortunately, they found no reason to cite us or to detain us any longer. We had a nice conversation with the young "kids" operating the boat. It turned out that they had just cleared this whole section of the river so that a cruise ship could leave and we emerged from "Nowhere" at just the wrong moment. They were checking to make sure we had no bad ideas about that cruise ship. Of course, while idling alongside the Coast Guard, yes, you guessed it, our engine overheated. We tried to anchor, but the darn river was over 120 feet deep and while we do have a 400 foot chain rode on our anchor, none of us wanted to have to pull that up again. So, we drifted, did the fix...and called Sea Tow. Thank goodness we bought that insurance before leaving San Diego.

As we approached our turn into the channel that would take us to our marina, we got the engine running again. We had to wait for a bridge to open, then a lock, then another bridge before we were safe for the night. Sea Tow caught up with us there, having been...yep, you guessed it again...boarded by the Coast Guard for being in the wrong place. The driver told them that he was racing to assist us and that, yes, we were the boat they had boarded previously and did they really want a sailboat drifting down the river out of control. Needless to say, they did not detain him for long. We did manage to get the engine started long enough to bring Mariah into our dock at the Marina under her own power.

The bad news is that we still haven't made it to Key West. The good news is that we had an adventure that none of us could have imagined, got to share it with two of our kids and we all lived to tell about it...and now we get to spend a month in New Orleans getting everything fixed. Mardi Gras here we come. Whoo hoo!