First Day/night 'abroad' and aboard!

Monday, Sept. 16^th 2013

Here we are at Offatts  Bayou, Galveston Island...parked up in front of some lovely homes.

The wind is going to die down, we are told, but right now it is fairly stiff.

It hasn’t been all plain sailing today.

Galveston Bay is FULL of stuff...wrecks (yes, ship wrecks), hurricane debris, old oil platforms...in fact so many platforms it is hard to know if any of them are working or not....sticks sticking out of the water a couple of feet..most of them clearly marked on the chart, but without binoculars, sometimes hard to detect.

We passed the point of no return....the last green marker out of Kemah, and bid farewell to the bridge and the boardwalk.

We followed the channel markers until we hit the Houston Shipping Channel. This was a first, also. The traffic was relatively light for our first foray into it, which was a blessing. This was mid-day.

Goodbye Kemah!

Waz at the helm just after leaving Kemah. This is it, kiddo!:)

Not sure if this oil platform is actually working. Hard to tell.

At least the natives came out to say adieu!

These two tankers look like they are on a collision course...but they aren't. They are both in the middle of the narrow shipping channel to the Port of Houston. We are too!

Our first ship passing:)

I love the native balast on the starb'd side of this shrimp trawler...See the peli's?

Our first 'tow', passing to port.

A tow tug. These standing up thingys push against the barge. The barges are all roped together and then to the tug. More on this tomorrow.

These tall pylon things are an Oil platform under construction in he Galveston Shipyard. We visited there in 2010 when we were in Galveston.

Texas city is an industrial town on the coast. Nasty air quality here, as you can see.

Don't you just love Pelicans? Well, I guess a shag and a couple of seagulls also found a place to settle, here.

Waz in the anchor locker sorting out ropes and chains after our debacle with the windlass (anchor winch) having no power.

We bid adieu to our ‘marina family’ in the office, and Katie came by briefly to drop off the photo stick and give us a couple of Red Fish Marine T-shirts..bless her.

I had been feeling a bit teary all morning. After 13 weeks in Seabrook, we were leaving!

Yesterday morning, being Sunday, we entertained Veronica and Roy to tea and scones with jam and cream. Roy was most appreciativeJ Veronica is on a diet so she didn’t enjoy the cream, but all the more for the rest of us, we say!

The rest of Sunday was taken up with  marketing for the final time to buy fresh fruit. We wanted to enjoy a final meal at our favorite Chinese restaurant, but alas they were closed. We ended up at a new Chinese restaurant which was twice the price and half the quality! Never mind, we had left overs for a hurried lunch while under way, today.

Sunday night, before the sun dropped, we got the hose out on the fly deck and washed her down. The red dirt from the construction opposite the marina was and is everywhere. The eisenglas was a sticky mess of dirt, seasalt and whatever else is in the air down there. I sprayed the whole thing with a weak soap solution first which helped.

We intended to go for a walk last night, but by 10pm when I had finished the wiping down upstairs, I was bushed, and Waz was definitely ready to go to bed. He had washed the boat down earlier in the day.

So, as I said...here we are sitting at anchor in offatts Bayou.

This is Moody Gardens and Hotel in the background. It is not far from our anchor in Offatts Bayou.The three pyramids house tropical birds and beasts. it is adjacent to Schlitterbahn Water Park.

The anchor part is hard won.

Remember, Waz had to install new batteries?? Well, it appeared that something didn’t get connected to run the windlass for the anchor. This is the motor driven winch. No motor...no anchor! Simple.

Well, he dropped the little anchor to buy some time while he investigated the lack of power. It isn’t as simple as sending an anchor over the side on a 57.6ft boat that weighs over 30 tons!..however, thats just what he did.

We reset the little anchor twice while drifting slowly across the bayou. Waz down in the engine room and up front with his multimetre checking which line had power and which didn’t...couldnt make out why it wasn’t working. Frustration!!!!Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Eventually, needing to stand still, he put out the BIG KAHUNA. This is the largest of the anchors we have ( a Bruce)...well, it is just different, but it weighs 60lbs which he hefted out of the anchor house and over the side complete with 50ft of chain. She struck fast, which was a bonus. The only big issue now was how to get her up again.

He solved that problem by releasing the windlass from the original anchor, wrapping the new anchor rope around it to grab, and once he had the motor running (which didn’t seem to take that long, this time around) he was able to bring her in, along with some additional muscle for the last part. Problem was, the anchor wasn’t in the anchor channel, so the hook on it was striking the bow. Oh well, we have some other chips out of the gel coat, so we will fix those too. He dealt to that before letting out the original anchor, and now we are sitting pretty. Phew!

That wasn’t the only drama for the day.

Coming into Offatts we had to be VERY careful to stick to the channel markers both in the water and on the chart. It was rather confusing, to say the least, as we came towards the new Pelican’s Rest Marina. The marina has added a number of additional Red Buoys to mark the channel in and out of the marina. This confused the heck out of us. One of the red bouys looked like it only lead into the marina, so we skirted that one thinking we were doing the right thing. On our electronic chart plotter, however, it showed we had strayed into 1 and 2ft of water. AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Yep..sure enough...a quick jerk told us we had hit bottom!  We were still well floating and managed to ease off the sand, thank goodness, but it has shown us how we need to return tomorrow.

The offending red buoys.You can see that we are on the starboard side of them when we should have been on the port side. The rule is...Red, right, returning. This means that the red sign/buoy should be on your right when you are returning home or into a harbour.

As soon as we hit, we throttled off and our own weight caught up with us and lifted us over, even though we were only doing 5 knots.

Everyone around here laughs about how many times they have been grounded...and seriously...Galveston Bay is VERY  shallow!  You see people out in the middle of the water up to their armpits, fishing standing on the bottom!

We were very happy to find ourselves in deep water again..this time 17.6ft, in which we are now anchored.

Waz has worn himself out today dealing with the challenges of the anchor and is sitting, enjoying the quiet out back on the cockpit seat. I will join him there with drink in hand shortly.

We are swinging a lot as the wind hasn’t lost it’s power yet. It is just 20 after 5pm. We are expecting the wind to die around midnight. I wonder how much sleep we will get tonight, our first night anchored out on our continuing journey. The Labor weekend trip doesn’t count. That was just a trial runJ

So, shrimp salad tonight for dinner with lots of goodies in it, and then perhaps an early night.

We came down the ship channel for the most part, passing a tow  and a couple of ships. I had to take photos of course... a first time for everything! I guess this whole journey is a first. I hope you don’t get tired of reading the firsts, and seeing photos of ships and tows:)

I rather like the swinging around..a different view every few minutes:)

Good night and sleep well...I sure hope we do!

NO dragging anchors tonight, thanks.