Sails from Galveston to ? Offshore or ICW ...

[Ladye]

Any Gulf Coast Sailors with stories to tell of your sails, I'd love to hear. Can always gain knowledge from your experiences. Maybe even some humor in .... :)

[LOLA]

I think I will join this as it's all a learning device for me...Next year I hope to be there....Watch out Ladye, I am thinking of visiting you next year.

[Tim]

Sailed last weekend over to Smith Point with a great sailing organization I belong to called TMCA- Texas Mariner's Cruising Association. We moored at a place called Spoonville RV park, but there was really nothing left other than the pavilion. Below is a link to the album on PhotoBucket.

http://s194.photobucket.com/albums/z59/c2csailor/Smith%20Point%20Cr...

Tim

[Phil Prater]

Depends on where your going, and boat equipment. Going east from Galveston, the ICW is slow going. Most of course, will not move at night, and barge traffic is pretty heavy. Anchorages and/or places to tie up are limited, so good planning is a must. In some places, diesel is kind of hard to find. Morgan City, for example, has plenty of diesel, but hard to find someplace with a hose nozzle small enough for a sail boat, or interested in selling less than a couple thousand gallons. My last time through there, could not get diesel at all. There is diesel in Homa. Offshore can be pretty nice, but is really scary without a radar. There are hundreds of oil rigs out there, and some do not have lights on them. You can sail the fairways, but sometimes they don't go where you want to go. If going anywhere east of the Mississippi, I would head offshore, and plan on making it a full moon night, so rigs could be seen. Once east of the Mississippi, the rigs basically disappear, and the sailing is really good.

[Gary B]

Well, it wasn't sailing but back in about 1975 I worked on an offshore geophysical crew - a set of three barges and a 45 foot crew boat. We worked shallow water - less than 60 feet. We travelled a lot in the ICW, between Brownsville and Louisiana. The ICW intersects with many rivers. In one case (I don't recall the location) at the point of intersection the river runs about five or ten feet higher elevation than the ICW, so there is a pair of locks to cross the river!! It was weird to go up, cross a river, then go back down again.

We were going through a few weeks after one of the big barge tows had a bit of a miss coming into the lock and collided with the lead-in wall. The barge took out about 30 feet of the heavy steel wall! Those things don't move real fast but they certainly carry a lot of kinetic energy. It was just good fortune that they didn't hit the lock itself - it could have been out of service for weeks or months.

I don't know how much traffic the ICW carries now (it was busy back then), but when you are in the ICW be aware of the way that those big tows work - steering a big tow is like balancing a 1000 foot pole on your nose - the steering is at the back, just like your boat, and the front is a LOOONG way ahead. Turning one of those through a corner in the ICW requires a lot of space on all sides.

[Ocean Girl]

I have an anchoring on the ICW story.
About 12 years ago I was crewing on a sailboat heading from Mississippi to Texas. The captain and wife wanted to anchor for the night. We were in Louisiana, west of the delta. It was midnight and the traffic was light. Even after explaining the dangers, I was unable to sway them from the idea. They settled on a nice abandon looking little cove just off the waterway (the chart showed no thru traffic). After securing the anchor they both went down below and went to sleep saying an anchor watch was unnecessary in such an isolated dead end spot. I have always been told not to anchor on or off the ICW and to stick to marinas or to tie up to the dolphins if situation allowed. I decided to keep watch in the cockpit with a hand held radio and spot light. Less than an hour later a tug boat turns up into my little cove, right behind him another tug turn up too and runs parallel to the other tug. So I have two north bound tugs side-by-side running up this narrow inlet, one on the east bank and one on the west bank. I was anchored on the west side. I shined the spot light on my mast and deck and attempted to hail them. Neither vessel answered my call or altered course. The anchor was all chain and a quick escape was not feasible ( I estimated about two minutes before collision). I finally flashed their doghouses with the light and got the attention of one of the tugs(east side tug), problem was he wasn't the one that was going to collide with me! The west side tug kept steaming down on me. It has been less than two minutes since the tugs rounded the bend. I am now yelling for everyone to get on deck, shining doghouses, shining mast and deck, but to no avail. Finally, the east side tug shined his light on me and then into the doghouse of the bearing down monster. The blast of his powerful light got the attention of the west side tug. The tug was able to maneuver around me. After the tugs safely passed by, I sat in the cockpit trying stop my racing heart when my captain came out on deck and asked me what all the noise and lights were about. It took about an hour for me to be able to speak without the risk of ... well you get the point.
Anchoring on or off the ICW is very risky , don’t trust the charted anchorages on or near the ICW, keep a watch at all times. My two cents-
Erika

[Tim]

If you haven't run aground, you haven't "REALLY SAILED" Galveston Bay. I'm still getting used to the skinny water down here.
I ask "How can you sail in brown water, don't you want to see the bottom?"
They tell me "No, I'd rather not know what's on the bottom of the bay." I guess they have a point;-)