September 10, 2006
Sailing the Whole #@^^! Ocean
I finally sailed from the Texas City Dike to April Fool Point as I had been meaning to do for a while. My friend Jim and I put Lively into the water at the eastern end of the Texas City Dike (29°22.031'N, 94°48.921W) and left at about 3:25pm. About 20 minutes later, we sailed past Half Moon Shoal (29°24'N, 94°50'W) which is now just a set of old piles. In the olden days there was a lighthouse located there. (A replica of it is on display on the shoreline to the west). We had cloudy skies, and winds from the ESE at 10kts. We made a steady 5-1/2 knots average and had top speeds around 8-1/2 knots.
After leaving the dock, we hoisted the spinnaker, we fumbled with it, took it down, fixed the problems, and hoisted it again. Jim seemed a little nervous and said as much, saying something about "...a whore in church." I administered a medicinal Tecate and things proceeded well thereafter. The swells were about 2-3 feet at the most, which is more than you typically see in Clear Lake, or any other lake, (except perhaps a Great Lake.) The boat moved well through the water. Dollar Point passed under our port beam after about an hour. The time seemed to pass much more quickly to both of us and when Dickinson Bay channel passed by it seemed like we ought to just sail on to Redfish Island. So we did, and for the second time in a week I sailed there. As we sailed up the coast of the Peninsula, We saw a lot of PVC pipes sticking out of the water. We couldn't figure out what they were for; they were set up far too regularly to be for fishing. Some of these PVC poles were arranged in a large rectangle that we traversed. It took us a few minutes to cross this rectangle, but we could definitely see the lines the poles were laid out on and even one of the corners of this rectangle.
We passed closest to Eagle Point at about 5:07pm, and continued north to ensure we were clear of any obstructions before making our approach to Redfish. We handed the spinnaker about 5:15pm, and came up on the wind a minute or so later. Sailing closehauled on the starboard tack, we approached the northern end of Redfish island. We tacked onto port to head towards the shell beach nearer the southern end of the island. We passed within no less than 400 feet of a lone fisherman, who for some reason thought we were too close. I only draw 3'9", I make little wake, and I was over a football field length away from him. To hear him complaining in a loud New Yorker accent about sailing here when "We had the whole damn ocean" was annoying and a little upsetting. Neither of us are particularly combative types, and we respect other peoples' space on the water. I know what it's like to be waked by a sport fisherman and I don't appreciate it, so I know to stay a reasonable distance away from other boats that I'm not racing or don't know.
This undeserved rebuke shocked and annoyed me. I was amazed that this individual took exception to our distant presence. I could have understood if I had been within fouling distance of his fishing lines, or had risked a collision, but I wasn't. I think he must have been in a bad mood. Perhaps he hadn't caught anything or had a fight with his wife or something and was out there trying to cool off. Who knows? I do wish I had given him more room if only to avoid being within earshot of his bad attitude.
As it was, we responded to his politeness in a reciprocal fashion and continued on. We landed at the beach at about 5:40pm. We stayed there to watch a couple of tows go up and down the Houston ship channel and departed at 6:20pm, sailing south towards April Fool Point, passing it at 7:05 and arriving home at 7:12pm.
It was fun sailing on the "Whole Damn Ocean". Far more fun, apparently, than fishing on it.
Here's the tracks. I broke them into three files since it was rather large.
