Bound for New Orleans

Evidently we were destined to visit New Orleans. We diverted a couple days ago, and should get there on Sunday or Monday. Right now, we're anchored off Cat Island and hope to make it as far as Malheureux Point on Lake Borgny tonight -- hope it's not unlucky for us. That'll put us in the lee of the south-easterlies we're getting now. They aren't strong, but with a lot of fetch, big shallow areas of water can get rough.

From there, we'll head across the lake and rejoin the GIWW at mile 35 EHL -- east of Harvey Lock in downtown New Orleans. Just to give you an idea of how far we have to go, Galveston is at mile 350 WHL -- west of Harvey Lock. I don't plan to stay inside the whole way, but I need to fix a couple things before I do any more sailing and strong winds, including a small rip in the mainsail. I'll write about that and the last trip in the next entry.

Zoe watch:

She's very happy to be at anchor again. The weather was a bit rougher than expected, so after 8 hours beating into 25 knot winds and seas as high as 10' on Wednesday night (0045) , I figured she's had enough, so we headed down wind and ran with with it. By morning, we'd lost about 30 miles, so I decided to divert instead of putting her through several days of that -- we needed to go another 100nm south before heading west to clear the rigs.

It was so bad that she couldn't even get to her water and food, much less go on deck to relieve herself. She can handle 24 hours of this, but I wasn't going to make her put up with several days.

However, it has convinced me to non-skid the cabin soul -- I put down a yoga mat for her, which helped, but the slick vanished teak soul is more show than anything else. The companionway steps were another problem, and I had to carry her into and out of the cabin.

These are all items I've added to list, but It was just a bridge too far at this point.