4AM Monday very early morning: Its amazing that we are still bucking a current, not much anymore but its still there. Almost 24 hours of head current has been a gas eater for us. We have been at almost full power for a long time trying to beat our way out of this malady. I can tell you it while its possible to do a one gallon per hour burn… its also possible to do a 2 gallon per hour burn. We will have enough gas to get there but not with much reserve. I’ve throttled back to 5.5 knots of water speed and only put 5 gallons in each tank that was all but empty. I have two more full cans and I want to save them to grind my way into Venice if the current requires it, so when what I have in the tanks runs out we are slow sailing to the mouth of the Venice Inlet if we have to. We only have 43 miles to go to the inlet, at this speed the GPS is showing us to need 8 hours worth of fuel to get there. Even if we don’t get any sailing in I think we can just do it. What that does is gives me a full throttle burn of 5 hours to make Venice. Surely all of it won’t be up current. I expect the inlet to be adverse, but it’s only 10 miles long. Surely I can hold 2 knots at full throttle up the inlet……
4:38 AM Monday The wind filled in a bit, enough to hold 5 knots on one engine so that will help… we’ll see how long it holds up.
5:08 Sailing at 4.8 knots directly toward the target…. no motors… it sounds really nice, lets see how long we can hold it.
5:38 Port engine back on, speed had dropped to the threes. We are currently holding 4.5 water speed, ½ a knot of current so we are making 4 knots on one very lightly throttled engine. In the past hour we probably got 4 free miles of gas.
6:11AM Monday We are in the middle of about 12 drilling rigs, I put both motors on for safety and to pick our speed up to over 5 knots. We need to get to the inlet as soon after noon as possible…. before the tide starts flowing out of the delta. 34 miles to the cut. Still fighting that nagging .5 to .6 current.
6:55 almost the end of my shift. The suns coming up and that always makes me sleepy. 31 miles to the cut and we are doing 5 knots with both motors on lightly.. the main is up but no jib. There’s not enough angle for the jib to do much good. Jono is up next I guess I’ll go wake him up.
10:30AM Monday morning I just woke up after 4 hours sleep and feel pretty good. We are 13 miles from the pass doing 5 knots water speed and 4.5 over ground…. we still have a current to contend with. Russ just came on at 10. The GPS is showing a 1:44 arrival at the mouth of the cut. So far the gas in the tanks has held out, 2 ½ more hours to go and we can load the last 10 gallons in for the push to Venice. Hopefully we won’t have a hard current in.. but judging by what’s happened so far I’m hoping for only 4 knots in our face inside the cut… lol. High tide is at 1:00 so maybe there won’t be much of a tidal outflow right away. Without getting up from the table I can count 50 wells and drilling rigs around us right now. Land is only 6 miles away, but the Mississippi Delta must be flat as a flitter because you can’t see it from here. Russ made me some coffee, it tastes pretty good this morning. At least the waves are gone… there is only a bit of wind ripple this morning…. no swells. 11:15ish – 11 miles to go. Its pretty humid here in the New Orleans area, hotter and more humid than the Bahamas. The water is pretty much the same tho.. it holds the boat up and feels wet….. other than that there are no similarities between this water and the Bahamas…lol. Actually for the Gulf, we are in 26′ and its not too bad.. there is a green tint to it instead of solid brown. We sure hoped for more sailing weather on this leg…. I’m feeling smart for adding the extra 4 gas cans 🙂 You never know what will happen to cause extra fuel burn. On this passage it was 24+ hours of opposing current, as strong as 2 knots and often over one full knot.
11:48 Monday morning: LAND HO!!! Its been a few days since we saw land. I guess the delta can be called “land”. If it holds up a car I guess it qualifies. Russ and I just had a sandwich, we have some really nice thick and well seasoned turkey breast meat on board. It makes a hearty meal. Big Louisiana flies have showed up on the boat and they don’t take no for an answer…. there’s no “shooing” these flies, you either take them out or they will get on your food. Luckily there are only 3 or 4 flies zooming about, I got 2 of them easily. OOPs, now theres 3 down… too easy. Russ has the boat running nicely at 5 knots over ground. We have a little wind that is not directly from our bow… how nice. Its from Starboard though, strange how much wind shift we have had on this leg. It’s not been on the beam very long (there was one short time it was) but we have certainly seen wind from all points forward of the beam. Seven miles to the cut! Before we enter the cut I’ll put the last two cans of gas in so I better round those up. One is on the bow tied to the center. We carried 5 cans up front to balance out the fore to aft weight. Fifty five gallons of gas in cans weighs around 400 pounds so some of it rode up front in the wind. The last of the gas is in the main tanks. We should arrive with 2 or 3 extra gallons we didn’t even need…. lol. That is if the current isn’t 4 knots in the cut.
12:35 We just saw some dolphin in the distance, it reminds me of the time we had a pod of 30 chase us down in the Mississippi Sound heading to Florida in 2010 (I think). Less that 4 miles to go for our entry into the Delta. The job backwinded so we just rolled it up. It will definitely come back out when we turn for Venice.
5PM Monday Venice Marina…. We got here “The fishing capital of the world” around 3:30. The Entry pass carried very little current, the Mississippi River had a couple knots to the good (for 300 yards) and Tiger Cut outbound had a knot or two in it to the good. Dockage was $5 bucks, cokes are cheap again, 20# of ice was cheap….. back in the land of plenty. We intend to get fuel in the morning and head out Tiger Pass to continue our trek Westward. Our arrival target date in Kemah is Thursday the 14th. Proportedly the currents will be favorable from here to Texas, tomorrow night and Wednesday morning might be a little rainy… but the three amigos on this boat prefer open water travel 24 hours a day to ICW pole dodging for 10 hours then sleeping 14 to avoid hitting tug boats at night even if the open water might have a rain shower or two in it.
SYL Rusty