We are sitting in the smelliest place in Louisiana… Venice Marina. There are more fish carcasses freshly cleaned.. bloated and floating and in trash barrels here than I have seen anyplace on earth. It truly must be the advertised “Fishing capital of the world” Out at the end of the pier… with the AC on we can’t see or smell any of it so life (not moving with the waves and listening to outboards 24/7) is good.
There are supposed to be some showers in the Gulf the next few days but there is also supposed to be following sea currents all the way home so our plan is to get out of Venice mid morning tomorrow (Tuesday) and make for Texas offshore. If all goes well we should arrive in Kemah Thursday.
I had 80 gallons of gas onboard for the Florida to Louisiana passage and we got here with probably 3 gallons left. Opposing currents drained us. We could have slowed down and delayed our arrival but we had the gas so we went for it. Tomorrow I’ll put a fresh 80 gallons onboard and head for Texas. The trip from Florida ended up being around 400 miles given the tacking and indirect travel to maximize forward speed. Texas is about 100 less than that. Our 3 hours shift schedule is working well so we all decided to get out of Dodge in the morning and motor on!
It would be nice to sail some…. hopefully we can do some of that on the next leg since I have this tall 50 foot aluminum thing here on the boat….. but so far it hasn’t seen much action. That’s not totally true because the main often gave us an extra knot or two over engine speed so that’s nice….. but it’s not “sailing”.
The boat is cooled off nicely in the 3 hours since we turned on the power and AC. It’s almost 6PM, the boys just got back from walking the docks… discovering our dinner options. OK.. there is a guy named David that came by and asked us to come eat fried fish with them on his houseboat 4 slips over. He’s got tuna and fresh fish they caught today. He’s from Mandeville Louisiana. We will bring them something from special the Bahamas in trade for the already expected good food
Sea Yawl In Texas….. Rusty