Houston Ship Channel, Galveston Bay, Clear Lake

This big boy passed us in the Houston Ship Channel. It's no wonder there are many partially submerged containers floating around on the world's oceans.

We had a foul tide from the fairway all the way to Clear Lake. Just when you think you are almost there...


Approaching Kemah Boardwalk near the entrance to Clear Lake. It's like deja vous all over again.


Having passed the 146 Bridge the beautiful Admiral can finally relax. 

At 1:30 pm we finally arrived at the marina. Marina--what a concept. Lisa's mom and dad met us at our slip, helped us tie up, and left us a large bucket of Kentucky fried chicken with all the fixings. KFC never tasted so good. It hit the spot. It was nice to see them and we are looking forward to spending time with them here in Kemah.

Lisa's Mom. Word on the street is she won that hat in some kind of a contest. 

 
Lisa's Dad. They begot Lisa.

The trip from Panama City was 568 nautical miles and it took 98 hours. Since leaving Kemah in late November 2008 we logged 14,719 nautical miles (16,938 statute miles). Our Caliber 40LRC performed extremely well and took good care of us. We have been very pleased with the boat.

Alas, the time has come to let the anchor bask in the fresh air for an extended period of time. It spent plenty of time buried in the mud--it's only fair. We plan on being in Kemah indefinitely, so the fish are now safe. Like they weren't already. We have tossed around the idea of a future voyage to the Caribbean side of Central America, but nothing is set in stone. Thanks for sharing our journey with us.

Adios...for now.

Panama City to Galveston

After 2 weeks in Panama City, a nice weather opportunity appeared, so it was time to move on.

Our last night was spent at anchor along with Jesa at Shell Island. Departure time was set for 11:30 the following morning which afforded Karen time to construct some Euro corn rows with Lisa's hair (women have this thing about hair in their face), then I prepared the dinghy for sea, and we had our last shower for--almost ever. Yuck.

Our anchor was up at 11:37 and we waved a sad good-bye to the crew of Jesa.

Our plan was to head well south of the Mississippi River and then pick up the safety fairways from there all the way to Galveston. These fairways are marked on the charts but not on the water. They are basically shipping lanes which are free of the countless oil rigs that dominate the waters up to 100+ nautical miles off of the Louisiana and Texas coasts.

This strategy adds a lot of miles to the route, but we know of several pleasure craft that have run into unlit rigs at night. That makes for a really bad and possibly cold night. We were a bit concerned about purposely getting cozy with the big ships, but it was no big deal. Since it's like a highway they aren't coming at you from all different angles like on the Atlantic.

For kicks, we recorded the number of ships we encountered every hour in our log entries. We averaged a couple of ships every hour, but that number increased when we got within 100 miles of Galveston.

Our first afternoon out of Panama City we had a very nice close reach sail with 10-12 knots of wind and very calm seas. But that was the end of that.The wind stayed light, but went directly behind us and the swells increased to 5 to 7 feet and on the beam. The swells stayed with us for the remainder of the trip, and we only managed about 11 total hours of sailing. It was very difficult sleeping on our off watch time because the pendulum thing was rather violent. I had to wrap my pillow up the side of the hull so my head wouldn't go kaboom. The weather was spectacular the whole way, but the swells were a bit close together, and with no wind in the sails, it wasn't comfy.


Proof that the world is round and that there are 3/4 sized dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico.


This is not a chihuahua or a rat terrier. It's not a osprey nest. It's Euro corn rows gone bad after 3 days at sea.


Our final dawn after 4 nights at sea. If you blow up the picture you can see scores of tankers at anchor waiting to dump their loads. 

At this point, we are still out in the fairways and quite a ways from the jetties--at least in sailboat years. I bet there were close to 100 tankers anchored on either side of the fairways.

Happy that the nights were behind us. And... the bandanna has made it's appearance. Photo by Lisa.

Egmont Key (Tampa Bay) to Panama City, Fl

If you exclude insane cat people, we love animals and wildlife as much as anyone, but...we moved to the north end of Egmont Key on our last afternoon/evening to get away from the bird sanctuary and the incessant squawking of the one trillion resident sea gulls. It also moved us closer to the inlet for a quicker late night departure. It was a bit bouncier but much quieter, and after a fitful nap our anchor was up at 11:07 pm. So, by a margin of 53 minutes, we broke our unintentional habit of leaving harbor on Friday the 13th. Seems as though we nailed most of them when they came around.

With the tide against the wind, the inlet was rough, but once we hung a right and pointed the bow to Panama City the seas calmed down. We sailed close hauled for several hours with 9-13 knots of wind, then bore off to a close reach to pick up some speed. Even though we were going into the wind, the seas were comfortable. We gambled that the wind forecast would hold true, so we didn't tack. This put us about 12 miles west of our rhumb line. The winds were supposed to pick up to the mid to upper 20s the following day and move behind us for a broad reach. We never want to sail on a close reach in those winds but on a broad reach it can be fun. If the wind didn't clock and stayed on our nose we would have had to bear off to Pensacola. But our Winlink forecast was on the money and with the wind clocking toward our stern, we were able to turn into a broad reach right on into Panama City. I wouldn't call it fun, because we were doing the cork screw twist and the seas were not small with the winds in the upper 20s, but it worked as planned.

When we approached Panama City, it was post card pretty with white sand beaches and several shades of beautiful blue water. As we reached the jetties, the water became flat and we had a wonderful sail up to the mouth of Watson Bayou, where we would rendezvous with Jesa and her crew.

Our anchor was down shortly before 3:30 pm with Jesa swinging on her anchor a couple hundred feet in front of us. Jesa hails from the Kemah/Galveston area and is crewed by Zak, Karen, and Jessie. Karen is Lisa's eldest sister.

The following day was Lisa's birthday, and she was excited because she now qualifies for senior discount at IHOP. Woohoo!


These are not Cheerios. These are Oh's. If you have never tasted them you don't know what you are missing. Don't mess with milk, just eat them plain. 

Before you accuse me of being cheap, we decided many years ago not to do the gift thing on birthdays and Christmas. Too much pressure and we aren't into the obligatory spend money-because-it's-what-you're-supposed-to-do thing. If one of us wants something--well there are 3 hundred and sixty something days in the year. So for birthdays, we do the eat out thing and maybe a treat or something. It works for us. And Lisa loves Oh's.

Jessie spent a night with us on our boat. 

We had a fun evening and we learned a lot about NCIS and Sugarland. We always enjoy spending time with Jessie. I like to tease her, she likes to tease me, and Jessie and Lisa like to gang up on me. 

Sometime the following week, Jesa and Nicki May anchored in St Andrew Sound just off of Shell Island. The only way to get there is by boat.


Photo: courtesy of Karen since I forgot my camera. The crews of Nicki May and Jesa (minus Karen) make their way from the St Andrew side to the Gulf of Mexico side of Shell Island. Beautiful white sand that squeaks under your feet.


Once again, photo is courtesy of Karen Kuykendall. Good thing her middle name isn't Kristine. For those of you from Rio Linda...


Left to Right. Zak and Boone headed for shore. I wish I had Zak's full head of hair, and Boone is wishing the dinghy ride was over with already.

We are glad the winds didn't blow us to Pensacola. Panama city is a great place for boating with nice water and good coves to tuck into, and we really enjoyed our couple of weeks with the Kuykendalls.