Leaving New Orleans via Lake Pontchatrain felt just like sailing Corpus Christi Bay during the winter. Big, open, gray skies over choppy gray/brown water. We motored North away from the Industrial Canal and headed toward the Mississippi Sound by way of the Rigolets.

The wind was steady out of the NE, which is typical because thats exactly where we were headed. A few miles into the river we found a decent close hauled motor-sail tack and charged our way toward the Route 11 and I-10 bridges. By the time we made the Rigolets (rig-oh-lees!?) it was a totally pitch black night. No moon, dark clouds, and the bow splitting wind as cold as a witches tit.

After a few night-blind turns (thank you GPS, radar, and spotlight) we found a great little anchorage in West Old Pearl River right next to the Rigolets swing bridge and played “hot dice” till we passed out. When we woke up, we could see the bridge no more than a mile or two away.

And a little typical bayou traffic… Houseboat?

The huge Rigolets Swing Bridge swung opens “slower than molasses on Christmas,” as said by the bridge master, so don’t let the time lapse fool you. We were just puttering along as slow as we could till that thing opened, then we flew outta there.

Once we were in the Sound we turned East and let 2014’s last sunset chase us all the way to Ship Island. It really was a gorgeous night, but when that sun went down the temperature dropped like a rock. Can we be in the Bahamas yet?

Things started getting pretty choppy. We pushed our way across the channel to Gulfport and anchored just off the leeward side of Ship Island for New Years Eve. The island itself is gorgeous as most of the Miss. Sound barrier islands are, but we were just there for a pit stop. In fact, we were getting tossed around most of the night, and even on two anchors it felt like we were on the verge of being thrown out into the Gulf at any time. That morning, though, we found our anchors dug so deep it took two of us at the bow and and the third working the motor to resurrect the danforth and fluke from their deep sandy tombs.

[That’s Fort Massachusetts; a Civil War era fort on the North side of Ship Island. I’m a huge history buff, and if the weather was nicer you better believe I’d have explored/trespassed the heck outta that thing. ~ H]

After Ship Island we tried to continue East in the Mississippi Sound, but the wind was, as usual, hard in our face as was the strong Mobile Bay current. The old Yanmar pushed the heavy Morgan hard, but we found ourselves lucky to make 3kts. We all sighed a collective “Screw it.” and headed to shore to wait out a couple of storms that looked like this…

We ended up just off Cadet Point in Biloxi where we stayed one night at the city marina and three more on the hook watchin’ the NFL playoffs and local weather on the little Amazon HDTV antenna. Its too bad getting stuck when we’re chomping at the bit to keep moving, but we’d be crazy complain. Biloxi is a very easy town for a few days on the hook, plus we’d just gotten a dinghy so we could row to shore for beer and casino time whenever we wanted. There’s not much of anything for grocery stores in the Point Cadet area, but hey free stay is free stay.

…not to mention, we’d been able to steal some WiFi from a nearby restaurant. So, its pretty much been open season on House of Cards on Netflix the last few days…. Kevin Spacey is a total psychopath…

When we left Biloxi, there was a pretty gnarly freeze coming our way for the next few days, so we hightailed it across the Mobile Bay to jump back in the ditch till Panama City Beach. We’re getting closer…

Last I posted we were headed toward New Orleans from Houma expecting a quick stop to ride out a storm, grab some tunes n’ brews in the French Quarter, and get outta there toward Panama City Beach for New Years. In the thirteen days since that post, we’ve made it all the way to….

Biloxi, Mississippi. Thats not PCB. Dang.

“Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans.” I guess Lennon had a good point. We didn’t exactly make it as we planned it, but such is the life of a cruiser.

The trip from Houma to New Orleans was mostly relaxing. We did pull up to the Boomtown Casino just South of the Harvey Lock where we actually managed to get $90 in free food for spending about that much gambling while getting free drinks all night. The ICW on that run wasn’t heavily trafficked while we were cruising through, and the infamous Harvey Channel and Lock was a cakewalk compared to the horror stories we’d heard back home (ehm-ehm Capt. Rob).

The run from Harvey to the Industrial Canal was exhilarating. The Mississippi River is a mighty one indeed, and we were able to get the heavy Morgan up to 9kts under engine only with a vigorous following current.

The real excitement came when we tried to pass North through the Industrial Lock. Fortunately for us, the GoPro ran out of battery while we were tied up before this part so I don’t have to prove quite how awkward it was since theres no photographic evidence. But let me tell ya, we all felt pretty silly. Rob, you’d have loved this part.

When we pulled up around 2:00pm, two barges and the lockmaster were radioing each other from opposite ends of the lock about how the wind was really kicking up. Its blowing 35-40kts from the south and still building. After about an hour, those barges had passed and it was our turn. Keep in mind we have to make the next bridge by 3:30 to beat the curfew, or we’d be stuck in the narrow channel until 7:00pm when the bridges can open again.

… And theres a big storm on the way.

We pulled into the lock running 3kts under bare poles and the engine in neutral, so believe its windy. As instructed, we pulled our port side along the wall and tossed lines to the guy on top of the wall. He told us to tie one to the bow and the other about halfway toward the stern. Almost immediately, the stern caught the wind and swung out like a barn door in a wind-tunnel.

We were now almost totally sideways and the wind was building behind us to the South. With Paul holding the bow off the concrete wall, Adam and I put everything we had into pulling the stern through the wind to bring us back in line just as the lock opened up for us to leave before the next barge came in. Next time, we’re tying the stern.

That was just the start of the Industrial Canal.

There were something like a million lift bridges in the few miles from the Industrial Lock to the North end of the Industrial Canal and Seabrook Marina. One such bridge, the Chef Manteur highway bridge, didn’t have anyone at the controls. Contigo’s mast rises about 48.5 feet above the water, and the “reported clearance” for this bridge is 50 feet. Luckily, the wind wasn’t hitting us quite as bad this far from the Mississippi, but it was still a factor. Now, though, we we’re caught between a now closed railroad bridge and a supposedly just tall enough Chef Manteur lift bridge with no one to lift it.

After phone calls, a ton of Googling, a zillion VHF hails to New Orleans Maritime Traffic, anyone on channels 9, 13, 14, and 16, and a bunch of little circles in this little spot we’d gotten stuck in, we decide to go for it. The bridge says 50’, and we say we’re shorter than that. So I said lets go.

Its impossible to articulate the rush of nervous adrenaline we were feeling right then. We’d just survived the Industrial Lock, and now this. When I tell you we cut it close, it just doesn’t do it justice. We really cut it close. Another foot of tide and the antenna might have been a part of the bridge. Another few feet and who knows. Whew.

After that, we made it to the marina just in time for that storm to hit. So many things came so close that day, and it all seemed to fall in line just at the right time. We beat the storm and made it to NOLA!

No matter how you look at it, things can only be so bad when you’re talking about being stuck in New Orleans for what turned out to be a week. The Seabrook Marina was a great place to stay, and even though in the NE corner of town we weren’t close to really anything entertaining, we managed our way into the Quarter for Christmas Eve without having to call a cab. It seems our good friend Dax was yet again cruising by toward his new job working crew boats, so we had a ride wherever we wanted to go pretty much the whole week.

[^The Spotted Cat is easily one of my favorite live music joints in New Orleans]

Good Call Paul also suggested we all check out the Treme band for Christmas Eve… and that was friggin’ brilliant.

Speaking of Good Call Paul/Brother Pablo, breakfast on the boat is never short of bangin’!

Even a bit separated from town, it wasn’t too bad getting around for supplies when we needed them, and the marina had a nice little general store not fifty feet from the boat. Unfortunately we couldn’t track down a diesel mechanic in the area since it was Christmas and then the weekend, but we had a lot of time to figure out a good work-around for starting the Yanmar.

We also ordered a little something to help us get around while at anchor…

As soon as we can get some lettering, the name of the Newport Vessels 8’10” inflatable is “Gettin’ It.”

After a week in New Orleans for what we’d hoped would be the longest weather delay we’d see for a while, we jumped into Lake Ponchotrain and headed North East…

Over the last week or so, we’ve gotten ourselves well in touch with two things that can really slow few sailors down: engine trouble and winter weather fronts.

But before that happened, we took on a fourth passenger for a bit…

When our new friend added a layer of “paint” to the deck, we decided it was time for him to go.

At a quick fuel stop somewhere between somewhere and here, we checked the coolant to find what looked like a layer of mud.

Shit indeed.

We flushed it out, refilled with new coolant, cleaned what had to be a year of janky sea grime from the sea-strainer, and hoped that was the problem.

Moving right along to Morgan City…

By now we’re on a roll. Morgan City’s big wall they like to call a marina is just a pit stop. If we keep it up we’ll be in New Orleans in a few days!

Then, thanks to a rain front, we were stuck in Morgan City just long enough to realize there is absolutely nothing going on in Morgan City. We watched some Mel Gibson movies, drank some $2.50 ‘Weisers with three different guys named Henry at a tiny little spot called the Blowout Bar, had some bangin’ cajun at Rita Mae’s Kitchen, did some laundry, and decided to get the hell outta there the morning the weather cleared. Three nights in Morgan due to weather. What a bummer.

Then all of a sudden, the trusty ol’ 1980 Yanmar 3QM30F threatened to keep us in the stale little town even longer. After an hour of bleeding air out of the fuel lines and chasing phantom leaks, we got her running and skipped out as quick as we could toward Houma.

[It’s not that Morgan City sucks, its just that we wanted to get moving, the weather was bad, and we’d already watched Lethal Weapon 1 and 2, Braveheart, and the Patriot. So it was time.]

On to the next one…

Eight hours in the ICW and we’re in Houma. This stretch of the Ditch was particularly scenic, so I’ll just throw a bunch of pictures at ya for a thousand words each.

Before we left Corpus, we changed all fluids and filters, so I was already surprised about the mud in the coolant. When we checked the oil in Houma, we found what had to be a decade of sludge we must have knocked off in the last 130 or so hours we’d been running that engine this trip. Its not as though she’d been sitting unused in the two years I’ve owned Contigo, but we’d never run the engine for more than a few hours at a time. Maybe 15 hours once or twice, but never 130+ hard hours in two weeks like we have now in the ICW.

We changed the oil, ran her hard for a few hours, and changed it again. The brand new oil we’d just put in turned almost as black as the old stuff, but not nearly as gunky. I guess she’s just clearing her throat, because the following oil change we put in hasn’t looked nearly as bad.

Naturally, we had to put the oil in something.

Even after changing the oil twice, changing and flushing out the coolant, and cleaning out the sea-strainer, we were still having trouble staring the engine after she’d been sitting for a night. A few Irish coffees/beers/NFL games later, we’d found a leak just on the back of the fuel filter. By some stroke of dumb luck, taking the thing apart and putting it back together seems to have fixed that leak.

Well, at least that particular leak…

Now we see what looks like another leak coming out of the fuel injector pump on one of the metal lines running to a cylinder. Luckily, when we can get two cylinders going the third is never far behind.

Now all we need to do is fix the injector pump and we’re probably most likely hopefully back to good on that engine!

On to New Orleans!!

Every now and again you get lucky and come across some damn good people to help get work done on the boat. The blog entry below is our time spent in the casinos in Lake Charles, but I wanted to give a quick and belated shout out to Matt and Chrystal Sebring over at Coastal Bend Yacht Services as well as Blake, Don and Karen at Gulfstream Marine.

The closer we got to our departure date, the longer our To-Do lists seemed to get. If it had not been for the flexibility, expertise, and downright good-nature of these people we’d still be in Corpus Christi unable to leave. From rebuilding water pumps to re-stepping masts and everything in between, there isn’t much you can’t get done between these two great local companies. Contigo and her crew highly recommend them

Coastal Bend Yacht Services: (361) 461-4067

Gulfstream Marine: (361) 883-8080

In the future, all reviews will be posted on the new reviews page when we get around to adding it.

Somehow we made it in and out of the Lake Charles casinos in one piece.. We even had a minor run-in with Tillman Furtita’s goon squad and yet we’re still here. We endured the roulette, craps, blackjack, and poker tables… sorta. Even our crazy friend Dax came up and visited us and we still managed to survive. For anyone that knows Dax, you know thats not easy. [Love ya Dax, we’ll see ya again soon bruddah!]

If we can handle that, hopefully we can handle the ICW to New Orleans over the next few days.

I won’t spend too much time describing our time in the casinos, but I will say we had a great time at the L’Auberge. At first, though, we pulled up to the brand new Golden Nugget. Their facility wasn’t finished yet, but after speaking with the front desk and other very friendly employees we were psyched our stay was comped.

An hour or so later we were approached by a bunch of suits from the mega-yacht right next to us.

The alpha-apparent didn’t feel the need to identify or introduce himself. “I don’t care who you talked to, you’re talking to me now. Shove off.” and “I’m in charge of everything here, you need to leave.”

“You know, this isn’t very good customer service from someone who says they’re in charge of everything.”

“You’re right, its not. Shove off.”

Ah, thats the owner’s yacht. He must have a dinner party to get to at his new casino. I guess he can’t be bothered by the sight of us 30 yards away while he gets dressed.

Another 20 minutes went by and karma came through in the clutch. A fire alarm had just gone off inside, and to the tune of Mr Furtita’s private band on the balcony just across from his yacht, hundreds of people with their money sitting harmlessly in their wallets were evacuating their slot machines and waiting outside.

We hung out just long enough to write a cheeky letter, gave it to the very nice man with the name tag that said “Head of Security,” and puttered next door where our stay was practically comped after the Hotel Manager heard our story.

So, if you’re ever in Lake Charles, visit the L’Auberge.

Now, we’re back in the ICW chasing down barges and tracking down decent anchorages…

Freeport proved to be a relaxing little beach town almost totally deserted in the off-season. Most bars and restaurants around were closed for winter, but one place in particular, Castaways, deserves as much traffic as any place I’ve ever been to with those amazing burgers. Their pizza is great too, but the Bayou Burger and Breakfast Burger deserve international recognition.

Surfside Marina was also a great place to stay with a friendly staff (thanks Matt, I’ll be calling you for fantasy football advice one of these days) and good rates.

Anyway, ever since we jumped into Freeport from the Gulf we’ve been Eastbound cruising the “ditch” to avoid those regular chilly Northern wind fronts. When we landed at Pelican’s Rest Marina we picked up our friend Paul (aka: Brother Pablo) in Galveston, and after a night of debauchery we’ve been a trio of ride-or-die brown water cruisers.

The Ditch has been pretty kind to us so far with far more interesting sights than challenges. Here are a bunch of shots from everyday ditchin’ it from Freeport to Port Arthur.

^ This is right in the middle of Galveston Bay. I guess he didn’t have a depth sounder ^

Sometimes sunset pictures just come out incredible. I get the feeling we’ll be seeing a LOT of sunsets on this trip.

^ These two are from the Martin Energy fuel dock in Port Arthur. Chance is a top notch dude with a history in the hardcore scene, and he sure knows how to negotiate. A lot of remaining hurricane damage here.

We’ve even had enou…

#$@%^$% WHACK @$#^$&!!!!!

WOAH! just like that, I’m typing along about the previous leg of our trip and the damn ICW springs its trap. We’re on the long straight run between Sabine Lake and Lake Charles and a big sunken plastic looking container or something sneaks up on Contigo’s starboard bow. See if you see it in the picture below (click to enlarge).

Sneaky little Ditch. The 1970 Charlie Morgan 38′ slammed into that thing like DeMarco Murray over the Bears last week.

So as I was saying…

We’ve even had time and initiative enough to reseal some leaky port lights and do some rewiring along the way.

That said, we’ve had our share of minor screw-ups to laugh about…

So, now we’re on to Lake Charles and the marina at the L’Auberge du Lac Casino for NFL Sunday. Come on Dallas!!!

— Adam probably won’t like that last part… but ‘Skins fans rarely have much to appreciate these days anyway ;)

We made it! Well, sort of…

For the first few hours we were looking at a beautiful sunny cruise out of the Port A jetties. The wind was pretty much nonexistent, but the 1985 Yanmar 3QM30 needed an endurance test and she performed very well in both calm seas and heavy chop over the 40+ hours we ran her.

At one point around 5pm that first calm evening while Adam and I were changing shifts, the voltage to the DC electrical panel dropped to 0.1v, rendering our running lights and virtually all electrical on the boat useless. We kept our heads on straight, and with the help of some friends via GPS text message (thanks Blake and Sonny!), we were able to track down the problem.

Don’t get me wrong, we were flying by the seats of our pants on this one. We were checking everything for voltage, climbing in and out of cramped lockers for at least two excruciating hours in the middle of an open watery dusk until we nailed it down to a completely corroded grounding wire… like i mean a rubbery tube full of metal dust. We “sailor rigged” a new one out of a 3×10 AWG wire, ran it through the floor, grounded it to the engine block, and kept on keeping’ on!

That gratifying feeling relief after encountering a new problem and thinking our way through it is absolutely priceless. We kept our heads on straight, got plans and backup plans ready, used what we had and figured it out. Time to pop a bottle or two of KJ Chardonnay.

The rest of the night was mostly pretty uneventful. We were making decent progress into a light breeze under motor and main, but a heavy blanket of dense gray fog was creeping up around us. Im talking about some serious fog here. Like film noir kind of thick gray smoky wet dense fog.

Sailing through fog like that is like swimming blindly through gray air. Its such a radical experience I can’t imagine how sailors of centuries ago did it without the help of modern GPS and radar – both of which we have and are extremely thankful for.

Another thing we became especially grateful for was the clear-plastic dodger installed by our friend Gary. Like a windshield on a car, that thing kept us protected during the unexpected NE’ern wind front headed straight for us.

When we left Port A, the forecast told us we’d be looking at comfortable winds under 10kts out of the SE… fortunately, we were prepared for weather. On the second night we took 20-25 mph winds to the bow consistently, pushing choppy seas against us and generally creating a total pain in the ass motor-sail at 3.5kts if we were lucky. We’re not so familiar with sailing in this area, so it only took a few horror stories about unlit abandoned rigs for us to stay in the safety fairway.

After a dozen hours or so of taking the cold front to the teeth, we ducked in to Freeport. Coming into Freeport Harbor at night for the first time in rough weather is nothing short of just plain nerve-wracking. Anyway, we pulled into Surfside Marina at around 3:30am on Sunday.

And then… zzzZZZzzZzZZz

Now, we’re cruising the ICW to Galveston. Here’s to the ditch!

Hi Mom!!!

(lol)

So the trip has begun! Sorry its a few days late, but as we trudged through mounds of Walmart bags and suitcases, the first real post was naturally pushed further down the To-Do list.

We cruised into Port A on Sunday night with beautiful weather all around and a forecast for sunny SE winds by Tuesday. The plan was to get up here and wait those two days for this north’er to whip its way through then head for Galveston and be there by Friday… plenty of time to organize our stockpile of Campbell’s Chunky and lighten the load on the beer cooler!

… and Monday morning was absolutely gorgeous.

I was feeling a bit giddy and thought it would be funny to run the bluetooth speaker up the mast. Music for everyone!

wait a minute…

Well… I was going to have to climb that mast eventually. I can’t believe I forgot to run a string to haul it back down. Oops. Fun morning though!

Then the leading edge of that northern wind front hit us.

We were helping our friend Capt. Greg move his gorgeous Fisher 43 from his old dock to the fuel dock, and then next to us at the transient pier. When we pulled up, though, a huge fishing yacht was enjoying the sun along the entirety of the fuel dock. The family looked content enough to avoid eye contact with the sailors aboard the navy blue sailing ketch puttering around in the marina. Around the time they’d left and come back from what I can only assume was a fantastic lunch, that North’er was wrapped around Port Aransas like a hungry boa constrictor.

As the wind swung to the north and the current rose beneath us, the Trump family fishing excursion was about ready to head out. Don’t worry, they weren’t bothered or hurried by the drifting sailors with dwindling fuel. They also didn’t mind whipping out a massive wake in reverse out of the dock.

By the time we pulled up the wind really started whipping. After topping off Greg’s tanks, the wind was pushing so hard a fender popped between the boat and the dock… never seen that before! The wind kept us at the fuel dock till about 8pm. Had we been able to pull up around 20 minutes earlier, we’d have been back dockside around 4 hours earlier.

Anyway, that Northern front really messed up our weather window and now we’re stuck in Port A till further notice. Poor us… stuck in a lazy island town shooting pool every night.

On Tuesday, the wind calmed down enough to climb that mast and get that speaker. Naturally, I brought the GoPro…

If anything, thats more time to play with this whole blog thing! If anyone in the area wants to visit, were at Dock #1 gettin our chill on!

H

Well, it looks like the trusty ol’ Yanmar was due for a few repairs I wasn’t yet aware of. Fortunately for Contigo and her crew, Blake and Don from Gulfstream Marine were available to give her a thorough check and save us from ourselves before we lose the Iron Genny coming into a busy Galveston port. They caught signs of a failing water pump, a cracked hose, and a couple of other issues worth attacking now. I gotta say, I’ve worked with Don and Blake a number of times and they’ve saved my ass before. If you’re ever in the Corpus Christi area, theirs’ is a very good phone number to know.

With a little luck, we’ll be able to get everything going this week and move base came to Port A by the time our Thanksgiving leftovers run out.

And believe me, we’re planning on bringing a lot of leftovers. If we lose this beautiful SE wind, Port A could be a terrific little spot to wait a few days for the next favorable blow. Either way we’re outta here early first week of December at the latest!

We’re just a couple of weeks out! This is the blog we’ll use to keep everyone up to date with our silly activities n whatnots. Dont forget to like us on Facebook!