Marinas diary of the ICW - Galveston to ???

Our daily trip log

1. Day 1 - Saturday, Oct.12, 2013
Today is our last day on land (so to say) - at the Legend Point Marina in Clear Lake Shores. Our slip is back for Rent again, so there is no way back - we are leaving tomorrow! I feel extreme

excitement like a child on the Christmas night probably waiting for Santa Claus to taste their cookies.
But.. before we leave tomorrow, we still have to sell both of our cars today. We left this big task to the last minute because we still need our car(s) to take back internet provider router and last shop for food supplies. As hard as selling two cars in the same day seems not easy, we did it at CarMax for reasonable prices - money was enough to pay off all debt and also enough left for a new main sail when we need it. The car dealer Dave gave us ride back to Marina. The rest of the day we were prepping for departure. After dinner we took a last walk around our marina looking for the mail drop box - did not find any, tried to say "good by" to some of our new aquaintenance, but nobody was home... I hope somebody will notice our departure tomorrow...

2. Day 2 - Sunday, Oct.13
Today is the Day - beginning of our journey. We don't know for how long and how far we will go but, we finally go!
All this preparation for 5 years for this moment hopefully will pay off some day. Well Santa Claus did not show up tonight with presents, but I still feel very excited!
In the morning we walked to West Marine store across the street to buy PDF and outboard motor mount on the rails.
While I was prepping some food for the trip, Kevin put the motor mount and the lifted the motor.
It's noon - and we cast off from our "home" place of 3.5 months. First stop at Galveston, Harbor House Marina again.
It's very nice place - in the middle of the old city, but there is no showers. The trip from Kemah to Galveston was smooth - unfortunately not much sailing, took us 5 hours. This time we parked nicely, and did not damage the wooden railing as happened last time, and nobody fall on the docks as last time Kevin's Dad did. We finished our day with couple of drinks at the restaurant we docked.

3. Day 3 - Monday, Oct.14
We have to finish couple chores today - drop off some mail, find a hardware store to buy new locks for our boat, buy mosquito repellent (including Bounce and Listerine - as people say on internet), and walk to beach so I can swim last time at the Galveston beach. It was very nice not very long walk around - Galveston is not very big city.We got to the beach and I was absolutely happy to go to swim and play in the waves! But... i got sting by the jellyfish, it was pretty bad. Tried to clean poison with sand, salt water, coke, fresh water - still was hurting. Oh well, need to walk back home. On the way we stopped for a lunch at some little place in old town and made it back to the boat - still need to prepare for our departure tomorrow. It will be very long trip - 12 hours at least, offshore. Need to make it to the Sabine Lake Pass. Had after dinner drinks for Happy Hour at another restaurant we noticed from our boat - and had funny conversation with the waiter. And again... we get the same question we get from many other people

- how extensive your sailing experience is? It start making us nervous, because no, we don't have a lot of sailing experience, but we have some, and believe that we can make it anyway.
Well, maybe it's just our ignorance again... will see how we will progress.

4. Day 4 - Tuesday, Oct.15
Got up at 5 am, well, I kind of did not slip since 3:30am - was afraid to miss 5am get up time1. Today we take our Lucky Seven for first trip in the big sees. I bet she will like it!
Ate breakfast - "kasha" how Kevin calls it, oat bran plus oats, linen seed, water. Gets you full for some time.
And, at 6:30 am we are out for the big trip! The sunrise is at 7:15am, so it was still dark outside, however, all the water channels in Galveston are very well lit, no problem to drive the boat at night. Then we gradually entered ship channel, the water got rocky, broken waves, light wind. Huge cargo and tanker ships are sailing around us producing huge waives - I got scared for a while that boat will sink from the splashing waves. We were going for a while in this ship channel until Kevin figured out that we should not be at the place we entered - looked like a parking lot for the huge ships! Well, we still kind of new to the legends on the chart plotter - the purple broken line is marking the "parking lot" for those ships. Oh, well, we had to head down to get out of this mess. After we passed the last parked ship, the water seemed came down a bit, however a lot of rainy clouds around - to avoid complications we decided not to open up sails yet. Marina did not feel well afternoon and Kevin had to drive all the way himself for 6 hours. When sky cleared out a bit, we brought up our foresail and that brought up our boat speed up to 6.5 nm/hour. At some place closer to Lake Sabine entrance there was a creepy place with a lot of rigs making beeping noises, looked like a place from sci-fi movie.
But we finally made it to the Sabine Pass Marina - we missed to make reservations in time and were a bit nervous that we won't have a place to park for a night, but luckily for us marina had plenty of free slips suitable for our draft. We just took one - C13. Two very friendly guys rushed to us to help to park the boat, so landing was smooth. From talking with them we figured out that there is not much around this place - one convenient store nearby and we can use one of the guys track to drive there any time, and ,marina's showers/toilet. Luckily we still have food, water and fuel enough to take us to the next stops.
We were so tired from the long day offshore trip that went to slip earlier and slept very well.

5. Day 5 - Wed, Oct.16
It's nice to wake up later than 5am! Today should be very relaxing day (at least we thought so). We were planning to drive up to the next Marina - about 3 hours from Sabine Pass Marina - in Port Arthur. There are couple chores we have to do: deposit check to the bank, buy some protein for our provision, get some diesel maybe, find internet, etc. Before leaving we cleaned our boat after long trip yesterday: outside and inside, it looks white and shiny like a new again! We left about 12:30 hopping at 4 pm to be at the Pleasure Island Marina. At 3:45pm, very close to the Marina, we noticed on the chart plotter that there is no any entrances to that Marina from the ICW side, and, the entrance on the other side of lake is max 3 feet deep! We cannot enter this Marina, what do we do? Kevin remembered from one of the blogs he read that we can anchor at the Shell Island (the one up along ICM after Stewts Island). We could not locate Shell Island on the chart plotter but found some other little suitable place for anchoring right close to ICW. Made to that place, deepest 10 feet, it's ok, but it turned out a very busy place right on the V between Neuches port and continuation of ICW. Then we finally located a Shell island on the plotter and happily decided to move to that place for anchorage. Spent about 1 hour trying to anchor our boat at this place: twice our over-sized secure anchor

would not secure on the bottom! On the third time we dropped our second anchor, Danforth, that helped and seems that got hooked up to the bottom this time. But... at the time we were sure we are done, one boat with the fisherman stopped by and the guy told us that we don't want to anchor at this place, but rather the other one around a corner... well, we need to go over there then.
And, the same fisherman guy gave us a huge red fish he just got - for free! Wow! this is such a luck for us to meet him: got directions and dinner. Exactly in time, because I was already planning for tonight to have lentils again, and again, and again...We made it to the save anchorage place safely, got anchored from the first drop, Kevin cleaned a fish in the cockpit, Marina made delicious dinner from that fish and seems that today is not so bad, even thought we had times when we did not know where we are going to sleep tonight.

6. Day 6 - Thu, Oct.17
Morning was beautiful, there are couple fishermen boats around, our anchor hold us well all the night long. After breakfast we continued driving ICW. We got appointment for the Ellender Lift bridge at 3pm, but arrived to the bridge about 1.5hours before. We had to circle around and between 1000 feet barges and numerous tag boats. On channel 13 we finally got short conversations with the skippers of these floating monsters, mainly about what side of the boat they want us to pass them. Would be so much easier if we could just dock somewhere while waiting for the lift bridge, but nobody answered our request where we can dock. Finally we passed under the lifted bridge and drove to the Lake Charles, LA - our next stop, as we thought only for a night.It was a bit shallow approaching BowTie Marina, but the drive in this little bayou was beautiful - start getting that Louisiana scenery near the water, but not, we did not see alligators yet! BowTie Marina is mostly for the dry storage fishing boats, and we saw there only one 34" sailboat. They parked us at the Fuel dock, because they don't have a special docks for transient sailboats. But we were happy to feel hard ground under our feet after full day of driving. This Marina is a valet marina, so two young boys helped us to park, fill a diesel and directions to the local store. Our fist question was - where we can buy alcohol and cigarettes? Actually in LA you can buy all that stuff at the gas station, and this is what we did. Stores are in walkable distance to the Marina, however you have about 4 blocks of the Social Section 8 housing to pass before you get to the main safe street. That takes some nerves to walk in that area - poor, black, without income people are not friendly to the white stupid couple.

7. Day 7 - Fri, Oct.18
The toilets and shower are closed at BowTie after 5pm, when all the workers are left. So... it's not very convenient, and owners are showing up not earlier than 9am, so... yea.. not fun to wait for toilet. After breakfast we headed to downtown to find a bank, grocery store, wifi, and look around.
It's not significant little town where Chase bank even don't have a restrooms for the customers. We had lunch at Sha Sha's restaurant, food was good, even though we expected more specific Louisiana dishes. Found wifi at the Stellar Coffee house and worked all afternoon on our further route to Morgan City via ICW. On the way back bought groceries in Market Basket and walked back home (all trip in city and back took about 2 hours walking). And, yes... we had to cross this dangerous zone of section 8 again....
On the boat Kevin tried to put on the new alternator, because we think the original one is kind of defected - makes really weird noises when changing speeds and that sounds maybe indication of a big problem. So, we thought changing to the spare alternator would be safer for our driving. Turns out that the spare alternator doesn't have a pulley with it and we cannot attach it to the motor without it. Hmmm, start calling alternator/boat stores, but all of them were already closed. Tomorrow we will try to find auto stores and see what we can do for alternator.

8. Day 8 - Sat, Oct.19
What a beautiful mornings around here - scenery is amazing, very crispy weather, no mosquitoes anymore, very quiet, pretty big birds, but.. still no any alligators. Today we are determined to find a solution for our alternator, so, here we go again - crossing dangerous zone of section 8, getting much not friendly glances while walking through their territory, we are trying to ignore all that and Kevin is begging me not to run as a scarred
white girl (but I am!). We are on Lake street - we are safe and made it again. Today we went other way - industrial side of the town, walked long time, stopped at auto stores on the way, got a lunch at Casa Manana (Mexican in this place???) where we finally found all the white population of this town. We walked a lot and stopped by at many places but no luck for our alternator. Finally made it to the Lake Prien Mall, sitting at the Coffee kiosk found wifi and worked on our blog. So, we have to stay at BowTie marina at least until Tuesday.

9. Day 9 - Sun, Oct.20
During the night Marina heard a woman's scream in section 8, was not sure if needed to call for help our neighbors Coast Guards (Lake Charles Coast Guard station is the next dock to our boat), or to load our gun. Screams stopped but Marina could not sleep all night. Night was very cold - 46F, uhh, Kevin finally asked for a blanket.