We arose very early on Saturday, and very seriously checked the weather.  The inconsequential seeming collection of thunderstorms brewing about over Hispaniola had suddenly gotten a chip on its shoulder, and the weather geeks at NOAA had money on the table that it might come right up the west coast of Florida, growing more fearsome in the calm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

 

We pow-wowed and researched as much forecast data as the Internet and borrowed wi-fi could provide, and plans were made.  We would scrap going out into the Gulf until tomorrow, taking instead the narrow Inter-Coastal Water Way (ICWW) as far as Sabine Lake.  (Sabine Lake marks the boundary between Texas and Louisiana.). Watching the weather, we would see if we could get past the Mississippi delta before Tuesday.  For whatever reason, boating west of the delta is primarily done for sport fishing.  There are precious few marinas available to tie up for the night, and even fewer marinas with a slip for a 50’ power boat.  I guess Floridians figured out that recreational boaters like marinas, so there are lots of them once we get past Panama City.  If we needed to, we could find someplace to hole up there.

 

But first, we needed to cross Galveston Bay to get to the fuel dock.  And let me just say to you PNW boaters, if the Washington ferries make you nervous, Galveston Bay is no place for you!  The industrial marine traffic is unbelievable!  Huge barges and tankers going back and forth with a no never-mind to a little vessel like ours.  Throw in a healthy sprinkling of fishing boats dragging their nets behind them, and several very pushy car ferries, and you have some idea what the Galveston Bay was like.  CRAZY.

 

As we pushed from the slip one last time, the heavens were not shiny.  Slate-gray and wet, it had been stormy since we rose.  In fact, for me, it had been the rain and thunder that roused me from my slumber early.  But Adventuress was meant to take wet weather, so out we went.

 

We made it across the bay without mishap, including through a squall so dense left us completely drenched and blinded as if wrapped in wool.  And as we pulled into the fuel dock, the sun broke through the cloud cover.  We needed a few gallons, so we had time to jaw with the friendly dockhand (Trevor, just starting college this week) and another saltier boater who was happy to keep peppering us with questions about Adventuress, where we were headed, and where we’d come from.  We talked about fishing in the PNW, the miserable heat in Texas, and boating to Florida.  And some three hundred gallons later we were all friends.

 

The sun stayed with us for the rest of the day.  Which was awesome.  We tucked into the ICWW and were well protected from anything resembling a wave for the rest of the day.  The ICWW is a manmade 500ft wide ditch through the marshy brackish zone.  It actually goes from New England down the East Coast, west along the Gulf Coast all the way to past Galveston Texas.  In fact, my parents’ house is on the ICWW in North Carolina.  Parts of the ICWW in them thar parts were completely wild and we put-putted along at a good 7.5 knot clip looking for interesting wildlife.   We saw sea eagles hunting, pelicans, and we think we saw a gator.

 

But let me be clear.  The ICWW was not just some recreational boater’s theme park.  It was very much a working body of water, and barge traffic plied its waterways.  At several points we were passed with not very much clearance by tugs pushing double-wide barges, and in one case, a tug with five barges end-to-end.  That day, the tug boat captains seemed a chatty lot, and, bantered back and forth on channel 13, which we had been lucky enough to get a tip to monitor.  Some of the banter was downright incomprehensible to our West Coast ears, drawn out and syrupy with accents of the South, or worse, Cajun bayous.

 

One exchange makes our Log Book Entry for the Day:

AL:  Adventuress this is Amer’can Liberty.   y’all don’t mind goin ta one-one?

Adventuress:  This is Adventuress on one-one.

AL: Ya’ll don’t mind us askin’ what yer boat is?  Cuz she’s a mighty fine unit.

Adventuress:  She’s a DeFever 49.

AL:  She is sweet.  And we’re all impressed that y’all used the radio.

Unfortunately, we didn’t make our evening stop until well after dark.  We had a route planned to the marina, Sabine Pass Port Authority, but the route had silted since the chart had been made, and the way we had originally planned had become unpassable.  So, a pow-wow in the darkening sweaty night and a call to the marina and we had another way.  We were instructed to go around the barrier island outside the marina and take the inside.

 

Sounds easy.  Wasn’t.  There were lights f—ing everywhere.  Sabine Lake was heavily industrialized, with a chemical plant, refineries, and several oil platforms in various stages of build.  There was even some whitely lit, sci-fi looking thing that we dubbed the Contact dome, after Carl Sagan’s novel Contact.  Even in the dark of night, workers were laying pipe.  Funny euphemism now, at night, with no good navigational charts, and no prior knowledge of the layout, it wasn’t then.  A small fast workboat filled with Hispanic workers darted to our starboard as we trepidatiously inched our way forward to warn us in broken English not to hit their pipe.   Which we were almost on top of before we could see it.

 

Finally, we made it to the approach for the marina.  Sitting on an exposed face of the lake, Sabine Pass Port Authority has a sheltered marina with a sharp right turn to get into.  The wind, coming in from lake, was strong enough to pin you to the inside elbow of the turn if you weren’t careful.  So, we turned wide to give ourselves room, and when Robert kicked the bow thrusters to make what he thought would be a small course correction, the stern bumped out and hit the far wall.

It’s never funny when your boat hits something.  There’s often crying and calling insurance when that happens, and not an auspicious way to get into the marina for our first night.  What saved us from crying is Art DeFever’s very helpful addition of a very sturdy steel trim piece, all around the boat, including the swim step corners.  A little spit, and she was shiny as new.

 

But the wind that was our enemy became our friend when we turned into our slip, and it helpfully held us to the dock.  Finally tied-down, plugged in, and safe after the first day.  Whew.