It's our birthday. Bruce and I share an October 17th birth date... (thus the boat name Dos Libras) This year we celebrated by may taking the week off to spend aboard our beloved boat doing wonderful boaty things and having glorious adventures.
This is always the expectation, right? You do whatever you want and have a perfect day on your birthday? Well, the best laid plans... So it started out great at anchor in Flato Cut. Every day this week we have done just what we wanted to do and the weather has cooperated beautifully... until today.
Keep in mind that all through this day while we were being bashed by high winds, I've continually checked my online weather sources and found that they, like the local weather man, have no windows!
We ditched our plans to spend tonight at Mud Island since there was talk of a norther' coming in, which would make that unpleasant. We opted to finish out our week getting some chores done, which is fun too. After the bash from Flato to Port A, we settled on the long dock. I tried three passes at getting the boat backed into our slip... and with the SW winds gusting to 22 knots, I just couldn't get it.
We had lunch (realized we had forgotten to eat breakfast in our haste to leave the anchorage and the wild ride) and I thought it would be a good time to have a nap before we started on the laundry. I crawled into our bed and AWWK! The pillows (all six of them) were soaked! As was the comforter and the sheets and the shelf behind the bed... The window behind the bed had been left open. Oh NOOOOOO!
This would be another important lesson learned. Check the windows before leaving, then check the windows again before leaving... This changed our plans for the afternoon. We bundled up all of the dirty clothes, pillows and bed clothes and piled them into the van for a trip to the local laundromat. So this unglamorous activity was our birthday treat. We spent the whole afternoon waiting for the feather pillows to dry. We caught up on some reading anyway...
Finally finished with the laundry and back at the boat, I baked us a birthday cake. (we picked up a mix at the IGA) It was a little lopsided since the SW winds were heeling the boat a bit. But when we finally got it iced and tried it out (Bruce wouldn't hear of waiting until morning), it was soooo good!
We spent the last half hour or so of our birthday sitting on the veranda talking over the day's events. I think it was quite a success actually. I got some very good experience on the boat in less than idyllic conditions and it handled beautifully. I've gained lots of confidence in our new boat from today's sail. I think the kitties are going to survive being Sailor Cats, although they look like they would rather be elsewhere... And we learned another lesson about getting under way... always check and double check the ports. We have so many and it's very easy to overlook one or two. No matter what happened or didn't happen today... I'm out on our boat with the man I love and what could be a better way to spend our special day than that!?
We got up this morning and found that our wind predictions of 9 to 13 were a bit off (as usual). It was blowing a bit more, so we made the decision to set out early to avoid the building winds that often occur in our area.
Our plan was to backtrack to the ICW then drop sails and go through the "eye of the needle" back into the Ship Channel then to Port A to refill our water tanks. We have another day to play with and had planned to spend tonight at Mud Island anchorage.
The pull of installing our new Rogue Wave Wifi booster changed our plans. We will head for the barn and spend the rest of my vacation doing boat projects. We had no trouble backtracking out of Flato Cut with Motion X. The winds did seem a bit stiff as we motored out. I zipped up the side panels on the enclosure, as much for my own comfort as to coax Jezabelle into the cockpit. She came out and checked out the wheel a couple of times before she decided it wasn't to be...
Bruce put the double reef in the mainsail and we rolled out the jib to about 2/3's and set course for ICW marker 71. We were seeing 30+ knot gusts with steady 26knots and the waves were building. Corpus Christi Bay is known for it's "chop" and we were feeling the full brunt of it. Bruce kept the sails trimmed conservatively and we were still topping out over 7 knots speed but the boat never heeled excessively and the ride was comfortable.
We decided that today was not the day to test our ability to thread the needle so we entered the CC Ship Channel on the stern of a tanker just outside of marker 43. Our plan was to do a chicken jibe to avoid a violent jibe. The waves were in the 3-4 ft range and quite close together. Bruce was in position and I threw the helm hard over. We came full to weather punching the waves head on and just squeaked over the mid point while tossing this big baby like a floating cork. After what seemed like minutes, we began the slow fall and Bruce got us trimmed. The boat began to make way and we were in the channel. Whew! That was close. Next time, start the engine in these conditions, just in case.
Next obstacle was the several shrimpers dragging nets in this mess. We weren't in the flat water yet and we bounced around the shrimp boats trying to stay out of their way while making our own. Another tanker was coming up fast as we hugged the green side of the channel and slowly passed the shrimpers.
Finally we were in the flat waters of the channel. Bruce praised me on my ability to handle the boat in these wild conditions. I asked him "what choice do I have?", to which he replied... Well, I guess you could either sail the boat or huddle below with the cats.
We had leftovers for breakfast after watching the sunrise and spending some time trying to get the perfect dolphin pic... no luck. Jetsam spent the morning in hiding but Jezabelle came out into the cockpit and prowled around. This brings us to 9 am.
Well, there are chores to be done. A quick check of the weather showed a line of showers headed our way. We prepped the deck for that, then I decided to investigate a faint odor I had detected under the Starboard side forward settee earlier in the week. Bruce took out all of the goods stored there while I got out the cleaning gear. I love using the home made general purpose cleaner I found with the mildew fighting properties of tea tree oil. I wiped down the interior of the locker but found no culprit. Maybe it was just a passing smell...
Well, one chore usually leads to another... In removing the seat cushion, I noticed that some of the seams along the zipper were giving it up causing a bulge. This seemed like as good a time as any to whip that back into shape. It's amazing how the memories flooded in of helping my Granny thread a needle because her old eyes just couldn't see it... now my own old eyes are having a bit of trouble.
Bruce entertained himself by entering some of the waypoints from his old GPS into the Raymarine Chartplotter that came with the boat. We have been somewhat hesitant in using the chartplotter. The screen has such rudimentary looking maps after using the iPad, it's hard to trust it. We had some difficulty in finding one of the settings that kept throwing us off when we tried to use the "Find Ship" function. It kept taking us off to Venezuela or somesuch place... but I found that there was an "offset" that was applied and when I turned that off, it worked fine. So, for now, we have abandoned the plan to ditch it and buy a new one (although the new ones are very sexy with iPad interface) and have begun to "move in" to this one.
The rain went from sprinkle to actual rain so I went out into the cockpit to enjoy the enclosure. Have I mentioned today that we LOVE having the full enclosure? Even Jezabelle came out to investigate for a while but she was suspicious of the small puddle on the floor. Before long, the rain stopped and the sun came out. I finished my sewing project and put all the stuff away.
Bruce floated the dinghy while I made some lunch. Strange things are eaten on sailboats sometimes... baked potatoes with leftover meatballs and sauce. Weird but yum and made some space in the fridge for tonight's leftovers. Oh and I found some info in the Cruiser's Forum that will help us.
We have a leak in the seal between the glass and aluminum frame on a couple of our Bomar hatches. Turns out that the fix will be easy. Use Captain Tolley's Creeping Crack Cure which evidently will fill hairline cracks before it cures. Life is good! (Later in the week we bought some at West Marine.... then we found an open bottle of it already on the boat. Turns out that the previous owner had already discovered Tolley's)
Bruce wanted to see if he could catch a fish so he set to looking for a reel. I got into the dinghy and waited. I got tired of waiting and thought I would see if I could start the outboard. I've driven a dinghy only a few times and never this new one. It started right up, which got Bruce's attention. He abandoned his search and headed for the ladder. But... he forgot something and went back down below to get it. I left! I took the dink out for a bit of a personal spin. The water was flat and I got it to plane easily. What a KICK! I sped around the boat a couple of times until Bruce looked ready to board. So I picked him up and we set out in the dinghy to explore the perimeter of Flato Cut.
On the map it looks like straight line shores, but in reality, it is lined with little curvy spots for fish to hide. There are a couple of larger cut-out spots that we motored back up into and found lots of fish splashing around.
One of these spots looked nice for drifting, so I cut the engine. Bruce threw a lure and I paddled us a long with an oar. I used it kind of like one of those paddle boards. It was fun. I was able to see some huge fish while standing and convinced Bruce to toss his lure over to them. One swam right near the dink and we're pretty sure it was a redfish. Evidently he didn't like what we had.
We left there to continue on our way and made a full exploration of the Cut. The clouds had been dense and it was really nice.
The wind began to fill in from the East, it had been west and nearly nil. The sun came out and we figured that we needed head back to open up the boat to keep the cats from sweltering.
We sped up our exploration and disturbed more than one shorebird as we continued around the cove...
We made it out to the entrance and got a good look at the flock there, then found some VERY shallow water as we turned and sped back to the boat. We'll have to watch for that shallow spot on our way back out...
We spent the afternoon reading and straightening things up. I made a new concoction for dinner. It was supposed to be chicken enchiladas with canned chicken. But when I went to put it together, the corn tortillas started to fall apart so I made it in layers instead. I guess it was kind of a chicken enchilada lasagna. Spanish rice finished it off nicely and we ate with a movie again. We will have this again... no, I mean this trip... we've got lots of leftovers, which isn't usually good for living on a sailboat with limited refrigeration space. We ended our day without the need of closing the boat against mosquitoes. We didn't see any, maybe because we are out in the middle of the cut and away from the shore. Thus ended a full but relaxing day at anchor with the promise of another great day to come.
