October 23, 2003
Sailing Offatt's Bayou
Last Saturday, Dodd, one of my friends in the Galveston Boat Club invited us to go sailing at there. GBC is located on Offatts Bayou, on the north side of the Island. Saturday was one of those priceless Texas Mid October days, right after the first of the fall cool fronts has passed through, the wind is blowing gently at 10-15 from the northeast, and the sky is a brilliant clear blue. Cliff, Dodd and I took Surprise away from the dock at GBC and sailed around the bayou, getting local knowledge from Dodd. General comments, the depth of the bayou near the club is around 20 ft, but if you want to leave the bayou you must honor the channel marks. The southwestern end of the bayou is very shallow at 1-2 feet. Without much of a plan in my head, we sailed down the channel towards the Intercoastal Waterway. We left the bayou, rounded Teichman Point and followed the channel as it turned northwest. We were barely keeping in the channel, and had to tack twice to get back to the windward side of the channel. Luckily, there was little traffic that day. One of the other members of the GBC was sailing a boat out there and hailed "port" in the way of a joke to us. I never know how to make witty replies to such comments, so I just held course and remembered to smile at them. They tacked back and turned to head Southwest along the ICW. We decided to keep heading upwind, since it's more pleasant to sail downwind at the end of a sail. Since the Maritime traffic in the ICW was light, it seemed reasonable to sail under the causeway bridge and through the raised rail bridge. I was a little nervous about it, but Cliff convinced me. We had to make several tacks through the narrow chute under the bridges. We entered the chute on port tack at the left side of the channel. My gaze was constantly shifting between the creosote covered wooden wall of the chute and telltales on the jib, which were dancing more than I liked. The large wind shadow cast by thr causeway was producing eddys and turbulance, alternately luffing the jib then filling it. Something was wrong, however. Things felt wrong. What was happening? There was a different feel to the helm, and a wrong feeling to the motion of the boat. A lack of forward motion, and a strange feeling, like extreme leeway... but not quite.... Then it dawned on me. Surprise was being swept down the channel by the current. It wasn't leeway it was the opposite... Weatherway? Negative leeway? In any event it made passage easier. We tacked twice more and were out of the chute. For a moment I was concerned about being able to get back against the current. I voiced my thought, but both Cliff and Dodd thought we could get back seeing that it would be a free point of sail, and the wind wasn't predicted to get that light.
My concern stemed from a time when I tried to sail up Clear Lake channel against both wind and tide. The wind was light, and the current strong. I was glad not to have to do that today.
Since we had plenty of time so I decided to sail towards Galveston Channel with the vague notion of saluting the Ellissa, if we could get though the bridge there. It was smooth, delightful sailing, but as we approached the bridge, I could tell that we probably didn't have enough time to actually do. Also, I didn't care to hail the Bascule bridge operator on VHF and have him open the bridge for me today. I got a good look at the bridge for future reference and turned Surprise's head toward the dock. I looked at my GPS that I had set up and realized that I had forgotten to turn on the tracking function.
"Damn", I muttered, and turned it on. Cliff also turned on his GPS at this time, which was good because Murphy was now in full charge of my electronics today and decided that the batteries which were at 1/2 discharged a couple of hours ago were now low. My GPS shut down shortly afterwards. But Cliff's GPS continued to work, which is the data source for this entry's map. We paralleled the ICW, and watched two tows that were heading toward the Causeway bridge. The relative position of the tows was a concern, and we turned toward the stern of the second tow. But the tow was slowing, so we resumed our original course, thinking that we would wait outside the bridge.
Surprisingly, The two tows came to a complete stop, and we saw why - a third tow with petroleum tanks emerged from under the bridge eastbound. She passed and the two westbound continued on. We again turned and took up a safe position behind the second tow and made our way through the bridge. I could tell that the current was now against us, but gladly Surprise still made way. We reentered the Offatts Bayou channel and returned to the yacht basin. The wind direction made for an awkward landing, so we lowered the sails and returned to the dock under bare poles.
This was one of the best day sails I've had in a long time. I enjoyed it so much that I'm looking forward to the next time I can sail there. At that time, I want to take Surprise from Offatts to April Fool Point.
