New Orleans Escape

First off, I have to say that the sailing yesterday was excellent -- by far the best day I've had. I'll write more about it later, but need to catch up first.

1130 - We're having lunch outside at a little restaurant near Shubert's Marina in New Orleans. We anchored nearby last night and pulled in for fuel this morning. They're only charging me $30 to stay at the fuel dock overnight, so we decided to stay -- best price yet.

The back of my iphone cracked during the last trip, so we're going to walk over to the French Quarter to get it fixed. Not sure how much it will be, but it will give me a chance to see New Orleans and get Zoe off the boat for a while -- not that she needs it now.

When we pulled up to the fuel dock, a very talkative older guy helped me tie up -- there wasn't any wind, and I didn't need any help, but it was a nice gesture. Well, the talking got Zoe excited, and she jumped ship. I was trying to get the boat secured so I could go after her, but this fellow just kept talking and asking questions. I should have just gone after her immediately and let him hold the boat, but I was trying to be polite.

I went after her as soon as I could and called and looked all over, but couldn't find her. Finally, someone drove by and said they'd seen her swimming in the channel. He drove me over to the dock and showed me where she'd gone in. I called and called and finally spotted her in the water on the other side. She swam right over and I pulled her out. I sure hope she'll grow out of this, I'm getting too old for it.

1515 - Lunch took much too long (not in NYC anymore), so we had to take a cab over to the repair shop. Even though I'd asked repeatedly to make sure they had the right parts for my phone, and they assured me they did, they didn't. The only upside (after a $22 cab ride) is that now I've seen how they're put together, and the cracked glass back isn't a big deal. And, it didn't hurt that the shop's on the edge of the French Quarter.

We're hanging out in the courtyard of a margarita bar (I think that's part of the name) relaxing and having a drink. It's a little hot now, but we'll walk around a bit once it cools off and may even walk all the way back to the marina later.

New Orleans watch:

I'd always thought the protagonist in A Confederacy of Dunces was a fictitious figure. However, I've already seen several folks on the streets, including the owner of the computer repair shop, who look disturbingly similar to Toole's description of Ignatius J. Reilly -- I'm wondering which came first. The way they dress makes no sense, but then again, why should it?

Trip watch:

I'd planned to write a full entry about the last attempt to head straight to Galveston, but I guess I'll just summarize it here. As I've mentioned, the winds and waves from the south-west (the direction we wanted to go) were stronger and bigger than forecast -- not significantly, but at least 20-30%. Unfortunately, I was unable to make any headway under these conditions, which I had to assume would last for the next few days.

In addition to the weather, a few other problems came up on the trip. First, I noticed the lee side shrouds were floppy in strong winds. Obviously, they'd been that way all along, and probably exacerbated the chainplate leaks -- mast pumping. I tightened them while we were becalmed Wednesday afternoon -- the really strong winds didn't hit till later that evening. However, it still concerned me.

Also, as mentioned above, the glass back on my iphone cracked on the trip. It still works fine, but since I rely on it heavily for navigation, perhaps too much so, and don't have paper charts for the Galveston approach, other than Galveston Bay, I was uncomfortable about continuing with it under those conditions. I feel better about it now, but will probably stay inside for the rest of this trip anyway, so it's moot at this point.

Finally, the luff edge of the top batten pocket ripped out on both sides. Luckily, I didn't loose the batten or sustain any other damage, but had to go without a batten till I could repair it.

I didn't get a chance to fix it till we got to Cat Island. I used some sail repair tape to fix the rips, which worked out fine, but the cause turned out to be a rubber cap from a previous batten had come off and lodged in the socket. Once I removed that, and filed the end of the batten to make it smooth, it seated and looked as good as new.

I'm tempted to stay another couple nights if we can do so for just $30 a night, but I'm also anxious to finish the trip. As Biden said about passing the health care law, taking a sailboat from Huntington, Long Island, to Galveston is a big deal (even without the expletive). I think I'd like to traverse New Orleans at night under a full moon, and just keep going -- we'll see.

It can't be any worse than Hell Gate, and since there's no tide to contend with, it's probably much better, albeit a little more crowded. However, I'm sure barge crews like to sleep too, so it might be much better. At least the amateurs won't be out.

1700- It's cooled off a lot, and a couple smokers just sat down next to us. I dislike smokers, and even though it doesn't seem to bother Zoe, we'll be leaving shortly. Until next time...

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.

And We're Off

The weather for the Gulf looks pretty good for the next week. The high winds we've been having should die down a bit tomorrow and shift to the west, so unless something else comes up, we plan to leave by tomorrow afternoon. This means we should reach Galveston by early next week, a few days before the full moon, and since there's no way of telling how long the window will last, I decided not to wait any longer -- also learned my potential crew couldn't make it.

We'll go over tomorrow and top off with water and fuel. Hopefully, they'll let me sit at the dock long enough to do some last minute shopping too. I'll get everything stowed tonight, but the first few days should be relatively calm, so I hope I'll be able to get to anything I missed once we clear the coast.

I spoke to Herb, Southbound II, who does weather routing, and he seemed to like window and the route. I'll check in with him daily to get weather updates and routing advice. I'm really excited about getting going again -- hope I can get some sleep tonight.

I guess I need to take a walk around and make another list. There's always something to do, but other than a couple of small things, I can't think of too much else that needs to be done before we leave. But if there is, I'm sure it will keep me awake tonight.

Zoe watch:

We've had a lot of wind for several days, but she's doing pretty well in spite of it. That includes wanting to sleep on the foredeck in 25 knot winds with 35 knot gusts -- I have make an effort to keep her in the cabin. The new non-skid makes a huge difference.

Aggie Muster

Muster is tomorrow, the anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto. I found a local group that'll be holding a picnic and muster nearby, but due to the distance and weather, I doubt I'll go. It's going to be held at an Air Force base about 40 east of here, so just getting there would take most of the day, but the clincher was the 60% chance of rain, high wind gusts, and thunderstorms. I guess Zoe and I will just have to have our own muster on the boat.

I spent most of the day working on the chainplates. I'd planned to re-caulk them a few days ago, but it got late and looked like rain, so I waited. Today was great, so I cleaned out the old caulk completely on the starboard side -- the side that was leaking -- and just touched up the other.

However, while I was cleaning out the old caulk, I noticed one of the chainplates had a bit more play in it than I would have expected, so I went below and checked the bolts. It turned out that all the nuts where somewhat loose. Snug enough to require a wrench, but by no means tight, so I re-tightened them all, then redid the caulking.

I used fast curing 5200, and placed tape underneath to keep the wet caulk from flowing out of the joint. They turned out pretty good, but I think I'll paint them once they fully cure just to be safe -- 5200 isn't UV resistant.

After I was done, I started thinking about the loose nuts again, and decided to remove them all and re-tighten them with locktight. I'm sorta lazy, so it took me a while to finally get around to it; While the port side ones were easy, the starboard side were a real pain, but it was the right thing to do, and I'll sleep better.

Zoe watch:

With all the work, I've been sleeping pretty well lately, but still not as much as Zoe. I keep thinking I'm done, and we can just hangout and swim or whatever, but something always comes up -- boats are a lot of work. You can ignore your house, and even your car, but if you ignore your boat, you might end up with wet feet, or paws, as the case may be. My goal is to keep Zoe's paws dry.

Missing Laundry

We're anchored and have plenty of fresh water, so I decided to do a bit of laundry yesterday. I'm using several plastic gallon buckets, so I can't do much at one time, but I was able to wash several shirts and both my pairs of khaki painter's paints.

By the time I'd finished washing, and bleaching the trousers -- they were filthy from anchoring -- the wind was gusting to over 15 knots. I don't have any clothes pins, so I tried to weave the arms through the netting to keep everything from blowing away.

That worked fine for the shirts, but I figured the trousers were heavy enough to take care of themselves and just hung them over the lifelines -- bad idea. As it started to get dark, I went on deck to check and found one pair missing. Luckily there wasn't any current, so they were floating, as if someone was wearing them, about 20' astern.

I dove in and rescued them, then spent a few minutes rinsing the salt out. The sun was going down, and the wind got pretty cold soaking wet out in the cockpit. I ended up using a line to tie them up and brought everything else inside to finish drying overnight. After all the excitement, I slept pretty well.

Zoe

This is just a test to see if I can post photos via email.

Weather Delay

Due to high winds and waves forecast for Saturday and Sunday in the western Gulf, I've decided to delay our departure until it passes through. The upside will allow us to wait for the full moon on 6 May. I've also got a friend who might make the trip but wasn't available until after the 21st. Now, maybe he'll be able to make the trip.

While we're waiting, I plan to do some sailing around here and test out my whisker pole, cunningham, and boom vang, all if which I've recently setup. I also marked my king post on the wheel, and 3 degrees on each side -- 3 degrees is the proper amount of weather helm for a balanced helm. My hope is that these will improve our sailing efficiency and increase our speed.

I've actually been pretty busy lately. Here's what I've done since we got here last week:

- painted on non-skid on the decks (twice -- used salt shaker technique the second time, and they look great)
- setup boom vang and attached it to my stanchion base just forward of the companionway
- setup cunningham on mainsail
- added second mainsail reefing line (actually for first reef point)
- setup jacklines from cockpit to bow on both side decks
- setup whisker pole blocks
- re-tensioned the alternator belt
- checked all seacocks -- opened and closed
- checked fuel filter
- checked rudder, marked king post with tape, and determined the 3 degree location on each side
- added rat lines over the side on each quarter (running from the stanchion base forward of the companionway to the stern) to make it easy to climb back on board
- cleaned the bottom
- reinforced the rudder stops under cockpit (keeps the rudder from turning too far and getting damaged -- port stop was worn down and no longer effective)
- fixed rudder post collar
- tightened rudder post stuffing box
- tightened steering cables
- adjusted wind vane control lines
- moved dinghy from foredeck to cockpit locker
- re-caulked chainplates

Wow, I got tired just typing that.

Zoe watch:

She's doing great, and really likes sleeping up in the bow when we're at anchor. Now that we've got a little extra time, and I've got all my jobs taken care of, I'm going to take her swimming tomorrow -- she's not getting fat or anything, but I'm sure she can use the exercise.