...so you haven't heard from us in a while...
David posted on the 17th about our change of plans. Here's what happened:
We left Palacios around noon on April 10th, with friends from Serendipity Marina seeing us off. The wind was against us so we motored until we were out of Matagorda bay. A pair of dolphins played around the boat, leaping nimbly out of the water at just the moment I turned my camera to the other side of the boat. I think they were mocking me.
Once through the jetties the water became very choppy with swells coming from several different directions. At that point we were able to raise the sails and made great time for the rest of the day and through the night. Away from land, a vast number of stars were visible. Venus made such a bright light that it cast a shine on the water like a moon.
The next morning the wind let up a little bit and was blowing from the southeast. We were only doing about 1.5-2 knots for the rest of the day. At one point we were about 100 miles from land and a tiny green finch landed on the stern of the deck. Where and how he came all that way is a mystery. He fluttered over about a foot from where Tom was sitting. Then he flew away as casually as he had come. A little while later a monarch butterfly repeated the same performance.
It was necessary to go so far south because the Gulf of Mexico, near land, is littered with oil platforms and other structures which are extremely dangerous to sailors because some of them are disused and unlit or partially submerged. At night the platforms loomed in the darkness like supervillain hideouts, glittering with lights and standing a couple hundred feet out of the water. Imagine my surprise when, in the middle of nowhere, the phone rang. The platforms must also have their own cell phone towers. We had fun calling home with "Guess where we are?"
The wind picked up early in the morning and we took two reefs in the mainsail. It was blowing from the northeast, so the best heading we could make was south to southwest. The waves were picking up: Tom estimates they were were about 5-7 feet. One of the strange things about being at sea were the noises. Brett, Tom, and I all heard voices that seemed to come from under the water. I recall several times hearing an isolated word or phrase that sounded unmistakable, sometimes a woman's voice, sometimes a man's. The wind made sounds like a choir singing: it's easy to see where the stories of mermaids came from.
By the third day the sky was clear but the wind was about 20-25 knots. Tom and Brett decided to take in the third reef and pull in most of the jib. Due to the wind, the jib halyard began a drumming against the mast that increased through that night. We thought the wind was above 25 knots. We dropped the sails, lashed the tiller over, and hove to for the night. It was very rough, but when you're tired you can sleep through a lot of things.
By morning, we found that we had drifted about 30 miles west during the night and were now about 80 miles off the coast of Brownsville. Even further from our course to Florida. We could stay hove to and wait for a day or two, but it might well be ten days or more for us to reach Florida, a hard slog against a southeasterly wind. I was still seasick and none of us was eating or sleeping too well due to the heaving and pitching waves. Also, the leaky portlights were letting in water, so the cabin, v-berth and head were becoming more damp. At least the quarter berth was still dry.
We knew that Tom's parents were planning to leave the next day to meet us in Fort Meyers, and they might be waiting there a week or more without knowing if something had happened to us. We were still only about 100 miles from Texas, so we decided to return to Palacios before they got all the way to Florida. This time the wind was in our favor and we made great time and speed. In the wee hours of the morning the wind dropped off. There were many oil derricks in the area and Tom turned on the motor.
Finaly we drew up to the Matagorda ship channel. The wind abruptly switched again and blew mockingly right in our faces. Also the waves picked up until we were rolling sideways from the swells.Try as we might we couldn't make any headway. Switching the engine on hardly had any more effect, but we continued to surf over these huge waves with the engine going, thinking about how close we were and trying just to push on through those last few miles to the ship channel. There was not so much wind, but the waves were rolling over and breaking and there was a lot of spray blowing off the tops. The current was also against us and we were barely moving. Crashing waves were getting the inside of the boat wet, the helmsman even wetter. At one point the surf broke off the anchor rollers on the bow. Fortunately Contrail is a sound boat and her hull and rigging stood up to this abuse.
Then the engine died. There were too many oil derricks around for us to drift like we had the previous night, so we called the Coast Guard to see if they would tow us just inside the ship channel. They agreed but stated that we would have to go to Port O'Connor for the night. No problem with that. While we waited, Tom and Brett dropped the sails and Brett steered under bare poles while Tom got some rest.
After a few hours the Coast Guard arrived: they were cheerful and professional and we all felt better. But they could only tow us at about 3 knots due to the high waves, so we had to endure a few more hours of crashing through the waves until we cleared the entrance to the bay. At this point they shortened the tow line and increased their speed: we bounced along behind the coast guard boat for another three hours before tying up, exhausted, at the St. Christopher's Haven marina in Port O'Connor. Tom checked the next day and our top speed had been 27 knots! Contrail's hull speed, by the way, is only about 6 or 7 knots.
When Contrail was safely tied up we got a room at the Tarpon Hotel, which owns the marina, in order to have hot showers and dry beds. We staggered with "land legs" and looked like drowned rats. Tom and I were still wearing our foul weather gear and Brett was wrapped in his only dry garment, a sleeping bag. We all heard sea noises in the shower, and tasted salt. When I lay down to sleep, the mattress felt like a water bed and for days I would dream of being at sea.
The next day Jim and Linda met us with the kids. I had a short time to hang out wet things, do laundry, and give the boat a cursory clean-out before we piled into the car and returned to Georgetown. After doing much soul searching and thinking we decided that it was now too late to leave. The hurricane season would start in only a couple of months and we were no further than when we had started. We decided to return the boat to Palacios, and try again later.
cheers, Dana
