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Day 3: Monday

We left Port Mansfield at 8:30 on flat calm water.  We motored the full 30 miles from Port M into South Padre Island.  The only help the Yamahas got was from the jib.  There was not enough wind to raise the main.. but it was over the port beam so I rolled out the jib for balance, it probably made ½ a knot difference.

The Lower Laguna Madre is wider than the upper.  There were times we could have ventured out of the channel and sailed (if there had been wind to do it) but we putted along at a leisurely pace, not having a long run to make.  Linda took on the chore of cleaning out the 90 quart cooler we use for storage.  It was a dirty job.. she scrubbed the chest out and I knew she would be ready for a swim when she was done.  I scoured the edges of the channel for a spot with no grass to pull up on and bob.  When I found it she was just finishing the project.  We were both ready for a core temp adjustment.. the cool Laguna Madre was just the ticket.

We turned up the music and bobbed under the boat with drinks for about an hour… then loaded up and finished the trip.  Today I found something weird… in the upper Laguna Madre you stay in the dark water… because the shallows are lighter colored.  In the Lower Madre it’s just the opposite.  The channel is light and the sides are dark and grassy… weird huh?  Yeah I only went aground once today to find that out.  Not bad…. The color change was indeed confusing so I approached the dark water (outside the markers) at 2 knots.. so it was easy to back out and say… OK…stay in the light colored path now.

Sea Ranch harbor on SPI is a tight little place.  Boats are packed in here to almost capacity.  We took the last available tee head.  The island sports the same tourist attractions that all coastal tourist towns have.  7 miles away we could see the tall condos, an airplane pulling a banner over the beach, parasails’ in the bay.  When we coasted into Sea Ranch harbor… there they were… the dolphin tours, deep sea fishing guides, all crowded into the little harbor.

We ate dinner at Dirty Als’.. here in the marina.  The establishment is highly touted… we found it good.. more hype than substance but the food was really good for the price, 10 to 14 dollar combination platters and worth every penny.  There are two more eateries here in the harbor.. the “plan” after sleeping in not having miles to make in the morning is to get a map of the island from the local marina and sample another restaurant within walking distance.  That’s about it.. our plan is a lazy day tomorrow.. but you know how plans are…… ours are always drawn with a stick in the sand at low tide.  The best thing is.. we are on vacation and don’t have to do anything on a schedule.  We are on the boat.. life is good.

Just before dark I jumped in the dink and made a 2 mile ride.. I went out of the harbor and back up the bayside quite a ways.  The water was dead calm save boat wakes so it was a fun ride.  If tomorrow is as calm I’ll do more reconnoitering in the dinghy.  She sure is running nice…. I cleaned the avocados out of the carb…. Man whoever thought of putting corn oil in my boat gas is truly my friend.  I don’t know what I would do with all my time if I didn’t have to clean one, two or all three carb on this boat so often.  I changed the fuel hose, screwed new plugs in the little 9.8 Tohatsu… charged the battery and man she runs sweet.

Lots of dolphins today too….  When we were bobbing under the boat 6 of them porpoised by within 15 feet of me and Linda.  Linda yelped at them trying to draw their attention (so they would come see us) according to Linda.  I would have much rather heard them blow and pass in silence.. but Linda’s “call” was apparently more important… too bad it didn’t work… who would have thought.

Tomorrow is a new day.. it’s 10:19PM, and since I’m still vertical you can rest assured that I AM on vacation.  Up.. but not for long.  I haven’t shaved since I left work Friday.. I’m interested to see how white my beard is.  Not papa smurf yet… but getting there.  Time to turn off the XM “love channel” and go to bed.  The cabin is a nice cool 70 degrees…again life is good.

Day 2 of Laguna Madre

We woke up around 6:00am to high winds, the standing rigging was singing to us.. dark clouds, and lightening all around.  The winds can be impressive in this part of Texas.  I suspect we had winds close to 60 miles per hour during the height of the storm.  I love our Manson anchor.  I never worried a moment that she would hold.  We have had other anchors that would have given me worry but our Manson.  She has proved herself over and over again (and no I get no kick back from Manson).

We could see the storm cell on radar so we knew the cell was only 12 miles wide so we would only have bad weather for an hour or so.   With the storm past we left our lovely little spot we named “flamingo island” around 7:20 am.  Given the prevailing SE winds… we expected to fight the waves and wind the whole trip but the storm changed everything.  The little front pushed us right along on NW to N winds.  We were able to sail all but about 2 hours today.  Wind was on and off in great quantities.. with storm cells about, as the direction changed we would go calm.. then wham.. form another direction.  We went from motoring at 5  to sailing downwind at 11.9 knots.  We put two reefs in the main to have better control on this blistery day.  Part of our sail was a little lively before we reefed!

The Laguna Madre is a long shallow hypersaline lagoon along the Southern Texas coast.  It is separated by the roughly 20 mile long Saltillo Flats land bridge into Upper and Lower lagoons.  The two are joined by the intracoastal Waterway, which has been dredged throughout it’s length.  The Laguna Madre is about 130 miles long the full length of Padre Island.

Rusty and I both had called Port Mansfield several times checking out dockage.  We were told that the cut gets to 2.5 feet with fine silt.  We draw 3.2 but thought we would give it a try since we were told we could push through the silt.  We made our way slowly into the cut and though we found the silt, it was thin so we never lost forward progress.  We had made reservations at Harbor Bait and Tackle…. Double checked several times to make sure they had power, we arrived to discover but their “power” was a rusted and rugged looking household outlet half nailed to a broken down creosote post.

Obviously, the main traffic here is shallow draft fishing boats that would like a place to plug in the battery charger… but no big deal either way.  We were about to give up on having power for the AC at night when a good Samaritan heard of our situation, made some calls and found a place with 30 amp electricity.  Awesome!

The municipal docks had real boat power, so we hooked to the grid and slept very good in the calm little harbor.  Port Mansfield has power at the municipal marina, another had fuel and ice at another but no singe facility has everything…. I guess that would be a monopoly…  There is one small restaurant in the harbor.  Think “biker joint” only it’s for shrimpers….  Basically a rough little club that serves food.

Fishing is the industry around here.  Everywhere you look there is a boat out fishing.  You will find makeshift cabins on stilts and some very nice weekend cabins spotted all along the Laguna Madre.  It reminds me of Stiltsville in Key Biscayne, Florida.  They are not as large but much more of them.

 Laguna Madre

We left Corpus Christi Municipal marina at the crack of 10 or thereabouts…..  The plan was to get up early and strike out for points South but we stayed up late / went to happy hour with Mark and Julie at Landry’s Friday night so we weren’t perfectly fresh come early Saturday morning.

Linda packed early Saturday morning while I slept in, I guess I got up about 7:30, around the time we planned on pulling away from the dock for our 10 day excursion to South Padre Island.  Anyway, we were on vacation so timetables are not as tight as work days.

The 2 hour sail across the bay was nice.  Quite often the wind blows like stink here in Corpus, but this morning we were looking for a bit more so we motor sailed half the time to keep 5 knots.  Luckily the wind was on our Starboard beam… what there was of it.  We expected to have it on our head most of the way South, but Saturday proved to be better than expected when it comes to wind direction.  By 2:00 we were sailing down the ICW at 5 to 6 knots.  It was a bit of a pinch to hold 200 degrees, but it worked!

The channel is very narrow in places, and the hard part is… there is shallow water for acres either side of the channel so it’s difficult to see the fairway.  The first time I ran aground was outside the green cans dodging a huge tug boat.  The second time I was dropping sail to stop for the night (at 4:30).  I was paying more attention to the sails than my position in the channel… whommmp… aground at 4 knots…. It took a bit to get off.

We stopped early because I found val-halla.  A picturesque little sand spit island that begged to be explored.  My target destination was still 14 miles away, but I’d only seen the cut I planned on stopping at on Google Earth.. and I had my eyeball on the perfect little spot so we pulled the pin.  Our little sand top island proved to be a great spot to swim under the boat.  There was a bit of grass in spots I hadn’t planned on, but other than that it was wonderful.  We bobbed in the warm bath water of Laguna Madre for 3 hours.

Our Saturday night island is a few miles short of Baffin Bay.  Tomorrow we will probably hook up to the grid in Port Mansfield for the night.  I’m not sure how far that is, so if we see another great “bobbing” spot, chances are we will stop earlier…. before we reach Port M…. who knows… we are on vacation.

Laguna Madre has not disappointed us… we have travelled much of the ICW and this is as pretty a cruising ground as we have seen along the big ditch.  Linda made a great little dinner… we both showered, enjoyed our meal and watched the pink flamingos feed around the shallow skirt of our own little island 200 yards off the beaten path of the ICW.  We are parked in 41/2 foot of water, there is no perceptible tide this far from an outlet to the Gulf.

Well, its very dark, the little Honda generator is running the boats AC, I made the bed and I’m not far from climbing in it.  Before I go I will check the distance to Port M.  Decide how early we want to get up and head out.  Today we sailed a lot, tomorrow once we round the corner at Baffin Bay to head closer to true South, I expect the wind to be more in our face, it will probably be a motor sail on the main all day.

I like this place….  The water is nice, there are several very nice sailing destinations within a 2 to 3 hour sail.  Again my only downer is the distance home.

The July 4th week will be a big sail for us.  I say big sail… we are used to sailing locally now so a 150 mile trip seems like a distance.  When we were coming back from the far end of the Bahamas we made 100 miles in one day sun up to sun down.  Traveling from Kemah to Corpus we made 160 miles in 24 hours!  Nowadays a trip over 3 hours is long I guess.

This weekend we are taking SYL as close to the Mexican border as I hope to ever be – South Padre Island –  Mexico will be 7 miles away.  I’m anxious to see the area, I have heard good things about the Laguna Madre and SPI itself.  I guess it’s always fun to find the end of any road, especially a waterway like the “big ditch”.  SPI is truly the butt end of the mighty Intracoastal Waterway.  After this trip we can say we have run the ICW from Mexico to Georgia.  I guess if we ever do our East Coast run we can touch the rest of the ditch and claim it all.

I’m sure SPI will be a zoo for the 4th of July, no problem though…. if we get “peopleoverload” we can always get on the boat and float off the beaten path.  It’s like going to the circus for us… “it’s fun but you wouldn’t want to live there”.

Saturday evening my plan is to beach the boat on a sandy bank 15 miles South of Baffin Bay along the entrance to “9 mile cut”.  I talked to a fisherman here at work, he said it’s a nice spot.. a good camp…  and I love Google Earth……  I have planned more trips on that tool than with any guide book in existence.  I plan on doing a mere 40 miles per day so we can take the time to stop and lounge around on any likely sandbar we choose during the heat of the day. 

Sunday we will probably motor-sail to Port Mansfield.  That will give us 2/3 of the trip and a new option.  The trip from Port M to SPI can be made offshore if you choose.  If conditings are sweet we will go out the Port Mansfield cut and look at some blue water for the last 50 miles.  If we are liking the Laguna Madre or there’s too much wind offshore we will stay in the Laguna Madre for the last leg.

The trip down is almost dead into the prevailing winds.  Saturday may provide a 25 or 30 degree point, but it won’t be much.  Sunday is likely to be on the nose.  Luckily the wind is normally lighter as you gain South from Corpus Christi.  This is one windy bay!   Hopefully our face in the wind trip won’t be too bad on the way down.  The good thing is we have as much time as we want going South, and will be riding the wind and waves back home when we need to hurry.

I talked to the dockmaster in Port M and it sounds like a good stop.  I expect Monday we will cruise from Port M into Port Isabel / the sister city to South Padre Island where my anchor will taste the bottom at the end of the ICW Monday night…..

Arriving on Monday night will give us 3 full days to explore the Southern reaches before the fireworks on Thursday.  I expect we will find a nice anchorage for the” big show” just off SPI.  So we will have 6 nights in all.. to explore South Padre and Port Isabel before the sleigh ride home.

SYL is looking spiffy, we had her compounded, then polished then waxed.. she looks like a new penny!  I bought new SYL decals to replace the faded ones.  This week I’m having all the rope clutches replaced and changing the house batteries.  Getting 4 full years on WalMarts best lead acid batteries is mighty acceptable to me.  They still reach and stay at over 13 volts, but won’t hold the load like they used to.  When they were new they (and the big inverter) would hold up the 16K btu Air Conditioner.  Now the batteries do good to play music all day without a charge before bed time.  It’s amazing how much better you enjoy a boat if she’s all shinny!  Our goal is to get everything and anything we want to do complete on the boat soon. 

This weekend we made a local trip and stayed Saturday night at Engleside…. it was fun to have folks over on the boat until all hours and have the boat in her best dress.  Linda and Erin spent all day yesterday deep cleaning so SYL is ready for South Texas!

What do they all have in common?  I guess if I’d put Selena in the title too – more people may be able to guess what the group of names have in common, but I felt like that would make it too easy.  All the people in the title sprang from my present work location… Corpus Christi Texas. 

What a diverse group of folks huh?  I’ll go ahead and tell you right now…. I haven’t seen too may Farrah’s “on the hoof” down here….  I’ll just leave it at that.  Well, I will chance it and add this one thing then stop right there;  The women walking the aisles of the local Wal Mart would more quickly be mistaken for Don William than one of  “Charlie’s Angels”……

Before people start tossing tomatoes at me… Corpus is nice!  Lots of water, a nice city marina, great sailing in CC Bay, good food, there are plenty of reasons to like Corpus and I do….  Really the only thing I have against CC is that it’s 7 hours home, so 2 day weekends aren’t worth the drive very often.  The water is much nicer than Kemah, the bay is a great place to sail, in 2 or 3 hours I can sail to several beaches nice enough for Linda to bob around under the boat.

I can’t believe it’s the middle of the year already….  Lots to catch you up on so I’ll be brief.  It looks like I’ll be working the current job until March of next year.  It’s a long one because we actually have two jobs back to back.  I’m only working 50 hours, the OT will start in September.  Then October thru February 2014 its back to regular hours, then another month of OT to round out the first quarter of 2014.  I like the folks I’m working with so things are going well.

Other big changes:  SYL is here and we sail her often, but we are not liveaboards at the moment.  Linda needed to be off the boat a while so we found her a land yacht. 

I’m no political activist or an aristocrat who has nothing better to do than hunt a cause to champion… I keep fairly busy in life.  I work hard, then play hard with little time in between to worry about politics, but as an American I feel the need to speak up (and step up as well).

If you still think America is the best country in the world, look at this:  I don’t condone his language (be prepared for a few bad words) but hang in there…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16K6m3Ua2nw

I see a fledgeling movement starting to bloom that I believe has a chance of restoring America to the country she used to be.  I’d like to say Amen to this speech. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFb6NU1giRA

The key element in the speech for me is that America now believes that “perception” of what is right is all that counts.  Why is that?  It’s because congress and the political system is infected, yes I said infected with lawyer mentality.  Lawyers are taught to win by “hook or crook” as the speaker said.

We need men of honor and integrity leading our country that can speak freely with conviction and not get sued or run out of office on a rail by the liberal media for exercising their right to “free” speech.  We have gotten “blinkie” over political correctness.  PC forms the curbs that the liberal media uses to guide our country and sell more newspapers.  To heck with that, say what you mean and mean what you say!

Currently our country is ruled by people that can best persuade you to vote for them.  I say lets look at the honor of a man.  I think we missed a great opportunity last election to re-install integrity in the whte house.

Is America starting to realize that?… and swing toward sanity rather than aligning ourselves with the cutest of the two dogs in congress galloping along biting at each other.. paying no attention to where they are going, or the people they serve?… or more pointedly ”. off a fiscal CLIFF?  They give our money away to business giants that screwed up, then sue the government for not helping them more….  Political parties are totally self involved, they speak crafty words to convince us to keep them and only them in power.. nothing else.

I advocate electing “re-founders” of our country like the man in the speech, not lawyers that live only to convince you that they have it right at any cost to reality.  Professionals that live their life in order to bask in the high glory of self induced power… on OUR money.   A group of self governing individuals that live high above the laws and rules they make for you and me.  What a gig… the ultimate lawyer win….. right?       We need heroes and men of honor that defend everyone, yes even Christians and white people who believe in God and fair play.

The liberals have convinced America (and I find my self even buying into it) that minority causes are more important than my integrity.  I suddenly realized why… beause it “sells” in the media.  The “underdog story” is easy to take up and defend and it sells newspapers.  What fun is it to say Mr. So and So did something right today.. look at how smart this man is and how it helped America…..no way!   The media lives on controversy and has slowly bled the integrity out of America.  The colors of the flag are now pink… they pale in comparison to what the red blooded founding fathers dreamed of, fought and died for.  Are you going to let the lawyers and spin doctors win again next election?

My only forum is this blog.  I’m not hijacking an otherwise quasi-fun history of our journey through life to go activist on you…. but today I feel like an American, I see the bright red color in the flag, not pink ribbons and subcultures that I need to buy into in order to be politically correct.  I stand for biblical principles and will re-focus my life to re-gain my integrity.  I think all us Americans have been cheated by our “leaders”.

Remeber this? “what does is really mean”?  Smoke and mirrors politics, lawyer mentalities disgust me.  I’m not a Clinton hater by any means and don’t you be either, I just use that phrase as proof of the “lawyer mentality” that drives our country, and it’s driving us right off the cliff… to be comfortable as a third rate country with money trouble.  Is that the way you want to run your business?

Put up a wall of integrity in your life, defend honor and justice.  Be proud to say you care about people and say something good every chance you get to uplift your neighbor.  Lets go out and be America again, our kids need us to step up and defend them.

The most oppressed group of Americans are white men of integrity and fair play.  Why have we given power to those that would subvert us to do things we really know are wrong.  Lets all get along, reach down and call a problem a problem and help the guy, don’t try to make his lifestyle mainstream so he’ll feel better about his problem.

Don’t disrespect the black man, but don’t prop him up on a crutch that will cripple him and his children either.  Equal rights has helped America become strong and get square on it’s feet, but at some point the black man needs to throw down that crutch and tear up his “black card”.  Be the man he wants to be on his own.  I have many friends that have done just that.

What America needs is a strong dose of reality and a leader capable of surviving special interest groups and minority pressure.  Does speaking my mind make me a “angry white man” bent on surpressing those less fortunate?  I’m not going to buy that anymore, or worry about “political correctness”, PC is not fair and not part of any solution… except to promote the special interest “causers” that wave that flag in an attempt to quiet the masses.

I think I’ll defend my beliefs and respectfully disagree with those that want to make it OK for Gays to lead boy scouts.  I think I’ll defend my right to say music that disrespects my beliefs and trains our kids to kill and act like punks to be popular is just wrong.  I think I’ll respectfully change sides of the road when I come across a group of black boys hanging out on the sidewalk with their pants strategically placed on their butt to offend me as much as possible.  I think it’s OK to be a Christian and defend my beliefs rather than blend in with the “New America”.

I am in the process of un-evolving……. drawing clearer lines rather than singing “cumbaya” with the liberals that would smear the lines to a flat sheet of paper with no lines, all encompassing, all stupidly unquestioning blob of failure in order to not offend a subculture that’s fun to champion in order to make myself “feel better”.  There is not only room for honest, loving, caring Christians….  there is a huge void that needs to be re-filled by them, by US…..   Honest Americans… We need to step up and read the rule Book caringly and comfortably, but certainly out loud, that’s what America was founded on.

I hereby pledge my alegience…..

One Nation Under God, indivisible with Liberty and Justice for All.

Have you ever wondered where the term “short rows” came from?  For those that haven’t heard the term it means getting to the end of something.  In years gone by mom, dad and the kids planted and cultivated their own food in the garden…  Seldom is there a perfectly square or rectangular plot to place the garden, so quite often the garden had a narrow end or a angled side that made some rows shorter than most.

When you get to the “short rows” it means your almost done hoeing or picking in the garden.  When you get to the short rows.. your’e almost done.  Here at the job we are definitely in the short rows with about a week to go.  The majority of the work has been completed.

In my world, it’s almost time to pack up my office in leftover letter size paper boxes and go to the next one.  There is a refinery in Corpus that wants us to come clean the plugs and tune up the carburetor.

I’ll be there pulling things together for 6 months before the overhaul begins.  It looks like the job will be a bit bigger than this one but not too much.  Soon I’ll be off the 100 hour weeks and back down to 50.  I really like the capital improvements a turnaround gives me, but it will be nice to have weekends off again, especially spending the summer in the warm blue waters of South Texas.  I have had one day off in the past 4 1/2 weeks, and that because they made me…..  There is a rule about how many days in a row you can work.  I may take next Sunday off if things are looking as good as I expect.

Sea Yawl Later !!   Rusty

Good morning world…  Right now it’s all about the job…..  I’m putting in the hours, mining for gold.  Like anything of great advantage the “gold” isn’t jumping out of the ground with the greatest of ease.  Like I tell my people, if it was easy they would have our kids out here doing it… that’s whay they call it “work”.

This morning I tasked everyone to make that knock out punch.  The 300 folks on my job have been working every day 12 to 14 hours a day (and night) for weeks on end, so it’s easy to become tired or complacent.  Now is not the time to rest, it’s the time for that final push to get this refinery back up and running.

For those that don’t know, I work for a company that overhauls refineries.  To better understand what I do let me draw a comparison between a refinery and your family car.  As the driver of your car you’re adept at understanding the controls and how to drive that car, but how many people know what the pistons in the engine look like or even the best way to change the oil?  I don’t drive the refinery, we change the oil.. and whatever else is broken.

Every 3 to 5 years a refinery has to stop operating and fix whats broken that can’t be fixed while it’s running.. and clean out the gunk that’s built up inside of stuff.  I’m the mechanic you call if you own a refinery or chemical plant that needs a motor job.  On this one… we have all the parts cleaned and welded back together …. the “knock out punch” is to tighten all the bolts and give the keys back to the owner so he can fire it up and resume making that $1M per unit per day again.  Currently we have 3 units down so as you can imagine, the customer is really anxious to drive his car again.

Next week we will be wiping the grease off the fenders, and filling it back up with fresh oil.  The effort has not been without skinned knuckles and a few cuss words… but think about it this way.  How much do you thank your mechanic for taking all your money just so you can drive your car again?  It’s a neccessary evil that you just have to do right?  Same thing for me, I’m a hard core mechanic that makes good money but I can’t expect a red carpet reception when it comes time to pay up.

Mining for gold in a harsh environment…… It’s not the “deadliest catch” but somebody ought to make a movie.

The job is over half way complete… lots of hours, 5AM to 7P…  Overall we are doing well, no job in a dangerous environment is without it’s problems, but we have managed them well so far.   I have a sailing trip coming up at the end of the month.  I’m bringing my sailboat from the Galveston area to Corpus Christi for the next job.

The sail will follow the Harvest Moon Regatta’s path, so I forsee 30 to 36 hour passage if we go harbor to harbor.  This summer we will bask in the glory of the deep South Texas sun.  SYL is looking forward to prettier water and abundant winds just above the Mexican border.

During our time on the Southern border I want to drift the Laguna Madre and beach hop to South Padre.  We will have 6 months of weekends free, so I’m exited to explore the sandbars and hypersalinated inland waters that finish the last 275 miles of Texas.

Ohhh… I got a new sailboat!  She’s a 57 monohull, all carbon fiber, mylar / kevlar sails, titanium fittings, the works.  She’s a copy of the America’s Cup winner of 1992.  I’m not joking, I really did.  My only misleading statement is that 57 relates to how long she is in inches (not feet).  Santa Clause gave me the finest RC sailboat I have ever seen.  On the stand she’s 10′-1″ tall and a work of art mechancially.  google “A3 challenger model yachts”

Cool huh?  I want to put her off and let her sail beside us on the trip to Corpus!

It’s beginning to FEEL a lot like Christmas

Yes, cold is a relative term, but bbbrrrrr it’s cold this morning.  SE Texas was still shorts weather until yesterday.  This morning I had to chop my tires loose from the parking lot with an axe to leave for work…… well…. not quite but it was 40 friggin’ degrees.

Living in the great white north (above interstate 10) is risky business but I know people do it…. Iv’e been told there is even life above the Red River, but I think it’s a government plot to see if people can really survive up there.  Can you tell I’m a weenie…. I like warm weather…..?

Yeah I know… I’m grumpy and way off the deep end on this, I tip my hat to Chicagoans that have to shovel 3′ of night snow to make it out the door.

OK, I can tell I’m not doing myself any good here.. I should shut up and drink my coffee… lol.  Just kidding… sorta.  I feel like “Curly” from the three stooges this morning… “I tried to think and nothing happened”