The Cruising Adventures of Wild Blue and crew...

Joan was working around the house today... good time to get out from under foot. She packed a lunch for me, then sent me packing; Wild Blue and I went poking around the area. Out through the swingbridge, under the causeway, across the Laguna Madre, and along South Padre Island.

It was a gorgeous day: sunny sky, light breeze, temps in the mid-80s. I lolly-gagged in the small boat channel, ran south through the Laguna, idled for a while to watch the dolphins play while I enjoyed lunch, then turned up the ship channel. And saw this outbound as I headed in...

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Look beyond the boat just in front of me, and you'll see an oil drilling platform. These are constructed at the Port of Brownsville, then towed with ocean tugs into the Gulf of Mexico. After contacting the tugs on the radio to be sure I wouldn't be in their way, I ran to a side channel to watch them pass...

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Here's an angle from the cockpit to give you some perspective...

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Four tugs; three in the front, one at the rear to guide this behemoth out to earn its keep. The platform is 250 feet across; 2 large cranes; over 25 stories tall, drafting 28 feet. It's impressive, as is the coodination amongst the tugs.

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I'd guess it was traveling at 2 knots +/-.

From there, I ran along the shore, doing some bird watching: a flock of roseate spoonbills, blue herons, ibis, egrets, a kingfisher, sandpipers, a couple osprey, and the ever-present gulls and pelicans. Our locals are the brown pelicans, we're seeing more white pelicans as the season progresses.

Back into Port Isabel and through the shrimpboat bone-yard. More boats here than 6 months ago... a sign of a declining industry. It has been displaced by tourism as the area's main industry.

It's still about the water.

Best wishes,
Jim B.
 
Jim - I bet that is one impressive rig from up close and personal.

We finally got some nice weather here. Been in the upper 50’s no rain and some sunshine. Can’t beat that for Western Washington in November. Almost t-shirt weather when you are working outside.
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Dave dlt.gif
 
When I was living in Homer (AK) back in the early '70s I was living with friends on their homestead and it had been a pretty wet and cold summer, like this one here in WA. One day the sun came out and it must have been all of 50 degrees, but we all took off our shirts and enjoyed the "warm" sunshine...

Warren
 
Lori Ann":8ajkjanb said:
When I was living in Homer (AK) back in the early '70s I was living with friends on their homestead and it had been a pretty wet and cold summer, like this one here in WA. One day the sun came out and it must have been all of 50 degrees, but we all took off our shirts and enjoyed the "warm" sunshine...

Warren
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"Everything's Relative" -

Albert Einstein
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(Misquoted here for your flection on the ironic nature of the Universe.)


Joe.
 
Re: "Everything's relative."

We're in the Big D right now (that's Dallas for you non-Texans)... Mom-in-law duty. Well, lots of in-law duty. I really enjoy having LOTS of people tell me how to drive. :roll:

And, while Joan's family is much more normal than mine, I don't want to see these people take off their shirts to enjoy the sunshine, Warren. :disgust

Best wishes,
Jim
 
See Jim, there is a God, and she has a sense of humor.
Just to keep this 'relative' to boating, here's a pic of Einstein boating on Lake Carnegie, Princeton, with Johanna Fantova, aformer Princeton librarian.
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JamesTXSD":vqjuw3sg said:
And, while Joan's family is much more normal than mine, I don't want to see these people take off their shirts to enjoy the sunshine, Warren. :disgust

Best wishes,
Jim
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And so, Jim, would you say that Joan's family has been "Ballast Blessed"?

Additionally, would it follow that in mariner's terms (to stay topical), that the men and the women follow the normal patterns, with the men having a "weight forward" or "bulbuous bow" design, while the women follow the "broad abeam & amidships" and/or or "ballasted abaft" design scheme?

Does Molly, the boat cat, also have a similarly belessed friend for the week?

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"Welcome to Texas, where bigger is better!"

Joe. (Not feeling too slim myself, these days!)
 
Re: "Ballast blessed"

No, Joe, they're pretty normal in that respect, as well. At the risk of being geo-political, all German stock... 6 siblings - all successful in their respective fields, all with the original spouse. Joan is definitely the "pick of the litter," though. :wink: She and I had that in common - we were both "the pretty one" in our respective families. :mrgreen: Damn stubborn bunch, though.

Wild Blue and Molly the cat are calling - we're outta here first thing in the morning.

Best wishes,
Jim B.
 
Howdy C-Brats. We're home from the Mom-in-law's. Getting back to the water is always a welcome sight. This morning, I took Wild Blue out for a cruise around the area. A "cold front" has moved in (we actually had a nice tailwind driving south yesterday), lowering our daytime high from 83 to 79. :? Oh well, it gives the weathercasters something to talk about. With the front came some overcast, but no precip.

Cruising by Port Isabel, there is the "welcome home" of the historic light house...

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I came into the city harbor to see what new development there is. There has been some discussion on the forum about condo development taking away dock space. It isn't just in the Florida Keys...

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This used to be a boatyard. Before that, it was the Yacht Club (you can see it in the background with the red roof). All that leveled to make way for 8 condos with slips. There are several other developments like that in town.

It was interesting poking around in the canals in the "fingers" area in town. The "fingers" are canals, lined by homesites; this was developed many years ago, and now older places are being torn down to make way for new. Some homes have space for two or three boats.

Back into the Laguna, I had the usual dolphin encounter (I know: yadda, yadda, yadda), and then headed towards the ship channel to come back home. Along the way, I came by this rat-boat...

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This is why anchoring laws get enacted. This wasn't an attractive boat to start with, but now it is dis-masted. I don't think it could move on its own. And anchored not far from the Coast Guard station.

Into the ship channel, I saw another oil rig outbound...

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This is an older, smaller platform compared to the previous. Do you think oil prices approaching $100/barrel have them getting moved out faster?

We get ship traffic that comes in from the Gulf and barge traffic that comes down the Intracoastal Waterway. When a rig comes down the ship channel, there isn't room for anything else to pass. Here you can see the barge has run aground intentionally, waiting for the oil rig to pass. Everyone takes their turn, the harbormaster coordinates the movement. It's interesting to listen to the radio... the Louisiana accent from the barge driver, the foreign accents from the ships, the professional pilot voice of the sea tug driver pulling the oil rig, and the "Spanglish" from the Brownsville harbormaster. Defintely a melting pot.

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Another look at life in the Tropical Tip.

Best wishes,
Jim
 
Jim - a cold front with the temperatures dropping all the way down to 79 degrees. I bet you fired up your wallas and had to put on a sweat shirt.
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Dave dlt.gif
 
Dave, ol' buddy,

When we left Dallas yesterday morning, it was 49º with a north wind. I had long pants on for the first time in months! :disgust By the time we made it to San Antonio it was in the upper 60s. We were able to turn off the heat in the van. :wink: When we pulled into Port Isabel at 8:00 last night, it was in the 70s. Ahhhhhhhhhh!

There is something very unnatural about thinking of 50º as "t-shirt weather". 8)

I've seen signs that the boating is coming to a close for some of the northern folks. That's why I try to put up posts regularly... if I could find some way to box up the sunshine and send some to Marty, I'd do that.

Today was cool enough to have the windows open in the house and the air conditioning off. It was nearly 70º when WIld Blue and I left today... so, no need for the Wallas or long sleeves (but thanks for worrying about me, Dave :twisted: ). Just so you don't lose sleep, the rest of the week is supposed to be back to normal: highs in the low to mid 80s, lows in the upper 60s, mostly sunny.

Best wishes,
Jim

PS - For any new folks that think I'm gloating, I spent plenty of years in the frozen northland. I really appreciated hearing about someone who could be out on the water when I couldn't. Just trying to do my part. Of course, when it was 95º and 350% humidity here this summer, we were up in the PNW enjoying the cool.
 
Thanks for the post, James. That rat boat looks exactly like a home built steel boat that moored next to me in Panama City, FL, in 1971!!! A Northern welder guy from... New Jersey, I think. Anyway, he had built that boat in his backyard and installed a gigantic, six cylinder diesel power unit in it. He could not run it over an idle or the entire bow would rise out of the water and wag back and forth. He hadn't put a mast nor sails on the thing and had been told by knowledgeable locals that it would just flip over if he did.

He and his wife were planning on going to the Bahamas and South America with it! They finally accepted the fact that the best it could be is an "idling" trawler and they headed out to Tampa one day. I don't know whatever happened to them, but that boat is a ringer for the one they had. Maybe it was a mail order design?

I suppose you'll be challenging the "Rat Boat" to a sailing race soon... Loser has to get out of town by sunset?

John
 
Hi Dr. John,

I don't know much about that boat, other than seeing it over the past year. It showed up in a boat yard that we go by almost daily when we're here; no rigging and in dire need of paint. Then one day, it was white... looked like house paint, and you could see the brush strokes from a distance. Then it was tied to a sea wall for several weeks and a mast appeared... the rigging looked way too light for the weight of the boat. We never saw it move from the seawall. When we came back from this last trip, the boat had moved to anchor in the Laguna (in an open area, shallow with no protection), a couple miles from the boat yard. The paint was already starting to come off in big pieces. It went downhill from there, as you can see.

It's sad. Perhaps under budgeted and not well engineered, it was someone's dream. As near as I can tell, someone was living aboard (may still be), but we only saw someone on deck once when it was tied to the seawall.

There are lessons to be learned from this... having a dream is good; making proper preparations to ensure the likely outcome of the dream is important. While you don't have to spend a fortune to be "out there", you have to invest enough (time and/or money) to make it seaworthy. There are a lot of boat options out there, and it's important to get the right boat for the mission.

Best wishes,
Jim
 
It is probably a Roberts design. Lots of them around, in varying sizes. Pretty much designed for efficient construction in aluminum or steel.
 
In the 70's, there were a lot of "Ferro-Cement" (Iron-Concrete) boats built in the S.F. Bay area., many of which were never fully completed.

Today they can be found here and there, but mostly at dead-end marinas in the California Delta where they waste away.

It seems that no matter how old a boat gets, there's always one more guy (or gal) who's willing to try to rescue it and turn it into their personal dream.

I'd bet it would be very interesting to find out the complete history of some of the grand (and not so grand) old wooden cruisers and sailboats that lie quietly in marinas deteriorating and eating up the dollars of their present and latest temporary owners.

This brings up a corollary point, mainly that rescuing and repairing an older boat of any size always costs a lot more than an ambitious wanabe owner expects. Best to figure out what you expect the costs to be, then multiply by 1.5-2 and see if 1) it's worth it and 2) you can afford it.

Money spent on these restoration projects can rarely be recovered very well, so only go forward if you plan to keep the boat for many years.

To their owner's credit, there are a few older motor yachts and sailboats going back as far as the turn of the century (1900's) that have been beautifully restored and maintained by their present and former owners. They're quite a "class act" in the grand tradition at a yacht club or marina, and add a lot of charm to the marine community. Special regattas and parades allow their owners to show them off and others to enjoy them.

Perhaps the best way to justify one would be to donate it to a marine museum in your final days and use it as a tax write-off as best possible.

Fun topic!

Joe. :smile
 
A few days ago, we volunteered Wild Blue for "clean up duty." Volunteers walk the shore along the bay, picking up trash. There are several islands nearby, so a call went out for volunteer boats... we were surprised this morning to find out that only two boats from one of the dolphin watch excursion operators and Wild Blue had offered to help. The other two boats are pontoons, so it was easier for people to get off once they are beached; they had about 10 people between their two boats, just Joan and me on Wild Blue.

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We met at the fuel dock and motored together to the first island. It's called "the Y" on the charts, but most local folks know it by another name. Shrimp boats often use this island when the weather turns nasty; they'll beach and sit it out there so their crew can't get off and go to see their wives or girlfriends... it's known locally as "Dead Pecker Island."

We hauled loads of bottles, drink cups, plastic bags, beer cans, pieces of styrofoam, buckets, etc, etc, etc. It wasn't easy work - the wind was blowing 15-25, but it was warm (80º+). It worked out that we were at low tide; this island was created by the spoils from dredging the ship channel and is mostly muck... the start of some vegetation, but mostly ankle deep gumbo consistancy mud. We filled bag after bag and then moved on to another small island (which is almost completely under water at high tide).

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We loaded all the bags onto the houseboat and then headed to the docks. The bags below are just from the 3 boats.

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There was a ceremony where they gave out lunch and some door prizes to the volunteers. It was great to see so many kids had come out to help - easily over 250 people in total. The boat crew got there a little late for the door prizes, but they had saved lunch and t-shirts for us.

The boat was in dire need of cleaning when we returned home... as were we. I had to chuckle when one woman asked us, "Will your little boat be OK in these conditions?" (She was on the pontoon) "Lady, when the waves come crashing over that pontoon and you're crying for your Momma, we'll come get you so you can stay dry on our boat." 8)

It wasn't cruising, but the shoreline is a better place this afternoon than it was this morning.

Best wishes,
Jim B.
 
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