Kemah to Lake Charles circumnavigation: Completed.

 

Ship and crew, upon arrival back in Kemah

We did it!  Imagine a rectangle, with the ICW on the north, the Calcasieu Channel on the east, the Gulf of Mexico on the south, and the Houston-Galveston Channel on the west.  Well, I just circumnavigated Dragonfly all the way around that rectangle.  (Yeah, it's more of a polygon than a rectangle, for you math purists out there.)  The total distance:  about 300 nautical miles.

My grandkids, fascinated with live crawfish

The journey also included our big family crawfish boil on Saturday.  Tom, my first mate for the last leg of the journey and a true-blue native Texan, drove to Lake Charles, met my family, and was immersed in this infamous Cajun tradition.  Let's just say that the whole experience made quite an impression on him.

Jeremy's turn to dive on the prop

We left the Bord Du Lac Marina on Easter Sunday at about 2:00 pm.  This was about three hours later than planned, for we had a maintenance issue to tend to.  On Friday afternoon, I had taken the family out for a little sail around Lake Charles.  It was a nice outing, winds were light, and a good time was had by all.  But we ran over an unseen trot-line (a fishing line attached to a float).  All seemed Ok - but being the overly cautious sailor that I am, I figured it best to don my wetsuit and check it out up close and personal, before heading out. 

The bad news:  a chunk of fishing line had wrapped itself around my prop shaft. 

Several family members came to the marina to offer help and brainstorm how to tackle this beast.  Tom Jeremy, and I took turns diving down, pulling and cutting away what we could.  The water was bitterly cold and murky as heck.  Imagine that!  Finally, Tom was able to cut off the last bit of that blasted string using scissors. 

Waving good-by

Then it was:  get those dock lines untied and get the boat ready, so Tom and I could get the heck out of there. 

Next followed the most exasperating part of the journey:  a 30-mile slog down the Calcasieu Channel, all on motor power, as the wind was directly on the bow the whole way.  I ran the engine on about 80% of capacity, as experience had taught me that doing so makes a huge improvement in fuel economy.  (Also, it gives some extra reserve power, in case I caught up with a barge and needed to pass him.)  But commercial traffic turned out to be pretty much non-existent.  Well heck, it WAS Easter Sunday.

Sunset in the Gulf

My biggest concern was reaching the jetties before it got dark.  The sun actually set just as we reached them.  We raised up the sails by twilight.  Then we made our long-anticipated turn to the west-southwest, just as the last rays of sunlight faded away.  Wind was just a tad astern of the port beam.  Engine off.  We were sailing!  Heel was about ten degrees.  We set main and jib for a beam reach, and did not touch the sails again until we reached Galveston.

Tom at the helm after dark

The Gulf of Mexico is a big, mean, nasty body of water.  There is absolutely nothing to break up the ocean swells for a thousand miles.  I've made a handful of excursions out there over the years.  My worst experience was when I crewed a vessel trying to head eastward, to Florida.  Ironically, that was also in April.  Pounding bow-first into those waves was pure misery.  But THIS time we were sailing downwind.  Wind was about 15 knots.  The water was its usual choppy self, but not too bad, actually.

The thermometer dropped significantly after sundown, so Tom and I had to don a few extra layers to stay warm.  Dragonfly's windshield was a huge blessing!  The clouds also cleared away, and a zillion stars came out.  And the music emanating from my SiriusXM radio made the whole experience even better.

Our course was a simple rhumb-line between Calcasieu and Galveston passes.  At our furthest point from land, we would be about ten miles out.  But we could always see city lights on the coast.

We each took three-hour shifts.  Dragonfly does not have self-steering, so whoever was driving had to navigate continuously.  My previously favorite nighttime navigation technique was to look skyward and pick a celestial object to steer towards.  But Dragonfly's bimini hid the sky from view and made that impractical.  A bimini is a godsend in the sun, but a bummer at night.

When Tom came up for his turn at the helm, I was dreadfully tired.  I staggered to the forward berth and wedged myself against the inside of the starboard hull.  I could hear the sound of the water sloshing outside.  The rocking of the boat was gentle and comforting, and I was instantly asleep.

And so it went all night long, as we alternated turns sleeping and driving.  On my next shift at the helm, we passed south of the Sabine channel.  An enormous ship passed before us, about a mile ahead - the ONLY commercial traffic we saw in the Gulf.

Every so often, I would hear the unmistakable sound of dolphins.  You could hear them breathing, and their tails hitting the water.  One small pod swam with us for several miles. 

Me at the helm, come daybreak

The next day, we reached the Galveston Channel a little after noon.  We had been sailing the choppy Gulf waters for what seemed like an eternity, and were tired and anxious to get inside the jetties and finally into some calmer waters.  As we made the turn into the channel onto a north-northwesterly heading, the wind angle became straight off the stern.  Time to change sail trim:  break out the whisker pole!  I set the jib on the port side and kept the main on the starboard side:  the configuration known as wing-and-wing.  With the combination of smoother waters and a more efficient sail setup, our speed over ground increased from its formerly sleepy four-and-a-half knot average to six knots.  We were flying!   (We also had a little help from the incoming tide.)  This is what we sailors live for.

Wing-and-wing

Four hours later we safely pulled into Slip# E-15 at Marina Del Sol, and tied up to the dock.  Mission accomplished, journey complete.  A crowd of marina neighbors gathered around to greet us. 

As one would expect, a handful of small things broke along the way.  I have plenty of boat projects to keep me busy for the next few days, not to mention giving Dragonfly a thorough cleaning.  Future adventures have not yet been planned - but the wheels in my head are turning.  Stay tuned!

 

Rachelle and Mom visiting Dragonfly at the Lake Charles marina

The crawfish boil was also my niece Lindsey's "Dirty Thirty" b-day