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!