We made it to our new marina on 08.07.2016. It was a “long” trip. We left Blue Dolphin and 12:00 PM and arrived at Harborwalk at 8:00 PM. It was pretty much incident free.
I learned, for sure, that Emet’s headsail is just TOO big to try to sail under full head sail alone. She is just too overpowered at the bow and it makes her way unbalanced. Maybe if we reefed the headsail, meaning just partially unfurled it, she would sail a little better under headsail alone. Something to try on future sails.
As the wind was pretty much right on our nose most of the way, we motored all most the whole way down here. Once we left the Houston ship channel and headed west in the ICW, sailing, for us anyway, was not an option. The ICW is just too narrow, has too much barge traffic, and gets too shallow IMMEDIATELY when you leave the channel as marked on the charts. I can certainly vouch for this is one area because we went from 18 feet to 4 feet in an instant. We were inside the channel markers, but not inside the channel as marked on the chart. Needless to say, we were on the bottom. There was enough traffic and swell that we kind of bounced and wallowed a hole under the keel in the mud and were able to simply back out. I think we were actually stopped for about 5 to 8 minutes. Using a line with a weight at the end, I measured the water depth and it went from 8 feet at our stern to 4 feet as I walked along the starboard deck about 15 feet. Then, it was about 6 feet at the same point across the beam on the port side. No harm, no foul. Just goes to show how water depths can be “drastically” different in only a few feet.
Arrival at the dock was uneventful. We coasted in, put the engine in reverse to stop our forward momentum, and I jumped off and tied up the port side. Easy as pie.
Two days here and so far it’s been very quiet. No traffic noise. Very little dock traffic. There’s a very nice breeze blowing constantly. Our dock is a bit shorter which makes our walk a bit shorter. We haven’t frequented the bar/restaurant yet. We went by Saturday night around 9:30 when we got everything sorted, but the bar was already closed. HUH? On a Saturday night? I suppose so, because it was.
Maybe we’ll make it over another time.