They're Headed In
26 April 2013 | Western Gulf of Mexico
Jill in Texarkana
Today’s phone call found Jack at the helm again. He said there was little wind and they’d been motoring all day with small seas. I asked about the fuel and he referred me to Bud. Bud said they’d been motoring since last night at about 9 PM. He didn’t know if the Yanmar had finally gotten broken in or what, but one tank had about a third left and the other two thirds left. They had put in the fuel from the jerry cans on deck, but even so, that seems remarkably good fuel economy. So they should still have close to 40 gallons left. They’d made almost 160 nm in the last 24 hours with an average speed of 6.6 knots. They were only 37 nm from the entrance to Galveston Bay and they were going to head in tonight.
They all must be very tired of being on the boat to persuade Bud to go into a harbor at night. The last time we did that was into Toronto Harbor. Granted that’s a busy harbor with a lot of city lights all around to distract you, but we had been there before. We almost sailed into the restricted area in front of the small plane airport out on the Toronto Islands. We also came closer than we wanted to some kayakers out there without lights. It was not fun and something we said we’d never do again. But Jack has sailed in Galveston Bay before. He said the Houston Ship Channel is wide and well marked, easy to see even at night. And Bud feels that with radar and the spot light and plenty of people they’ll have no trouble. But like I said, they all must be really anxious to step foot on land and probably more important, take a long, hot shower.
I called Bayland Marina for Bud and they told me he should come straight down the middle of their entrance channel, there’d be plenty of water at least two boat lengths out from the docks and he could take either of two T-heads just past a catamaran. A T-head is at the end of a secondary dock, so you don’t have to pull into a slip. You just pull alongside and tie up, no other boats to worry about. Since they won’t get there until midnight or 1 AM, that’s a very good thing.
Unfortunately, Jamie has to work tomorrow, so I won’t be able to leave here until late afternoon at the earliest, or if it’s busy at the hospital I may wait and leave at about 3 AM early Sunday morning to get there for breakfast. I’ll do a quick update to the blog on the arrival, after that I won’t do another entry until I’m on board.