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.
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.
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