Date: 10/03/06/Depart: Anchor Marina, 1130 / Arrive: Anchor Marina: 1900/Wind E, 15mph/Skies: Overcast/Temperature 85 deg F./ Seas: 1-6 feet/Crew: DW/Engine Hrs: 948.3

After missing a banner day Monday, we decided to play hooky and sail yesterday. Give the boat a sea trial, check out the new water pump. At 0800 there was no wind, so we ate a leisurely breakfast at Isabels, and went to Wally World to stock up on some food for the trip. Sandwiches and cokes. There was still a six pack of beer on the boat.

At the boat, we rigged the mizzen, 130 genny,  baby stay sail, and uncovered the main, attached the tackboard to the halyard. We went to the highway bait stand to get some shrimp (which I promptly left on the dock to spoil) thinking that maybe we’d set the hook over in Barracuda bay and fish for awhile. We stowed gear and got the boat ready to get underway.

At 1145 I cranked up the Westerbeke and let it get up to operating temperature before we cast off the dock lines and glided out of the calm of the harbor to the bay. Once outside we were pleasantly surprised with east winds about 10-15 miles per hour as we hoisted up the main and jib, tacking out into the bay. It was a quiet day as we slipped along the blue water towards the causeway overpass. Lining up and going through was no problem, and we picked up a fine breeze on the south side, well balanced towards the powerlines. It wasn’t long before we were well under the powerlines, and heading towards the pass.

Inside the pass I noticed that that there was a swell which was causing small breakers in Barracuda bay as well as the front edge of dolphin cove. Probably not the best place to hook up later, sort of rolling, but still not too windy.

We continued to tack on out of the pass, lots of traffic out, head boats, crew supply boats and small fishing boats. At one point, George with Fins to Feathers tours came close and we chatted for a minute before he headed out to the mouth of the pass with his customers. It looked pretty rough out there, as his boat pitched up and down on the closely stacked swell. We kept tacking, careful to get a good heading each time in order to keep from getting shoved into the rocks by the well. The “mixmaster” is rough and tossing ugly brown waves every direction.

Near the end of the jetties, getting ready to head out into the open Gulf, D points at the sky and says look at that waterspout!, and sure enough just south of us is a beautifully formed, although not quite reaching to the water surface, spout. I debate the wisdom of going offshore for a minute, but noticing that the attendant clouds are no more than a mile or so across, decide that it’s OK.

Once outside we start south on a close reach, the boat bucking and plowing through 4 foot seas. We set out trolling gear, and continue this tack for about two or three miles, turning around to head back. Olivia behaves like a prize mare given the reins as we slice through the swell heading north.  Once inside the seaway channel,  I decide to enter the jetties again as the swell outside is close and uncomfortable, and we start downwind through swells that seem larger than when we went outside no more than a half hour earlier.

Trying to go downwind now is an exercise in futility. Each time we ride up on a steep swell, the wind is dumped from our sails, and we wallow back down into the trough just as  the sails fill again, starting the whole process over again. We are making poor way, as I try and coax Olivia near the South jetty, maybe get a broad reach. At one point, we are caught by a breaking swell and lurch in the trough. I know what’s happening. A combination of outgoing tide and incoming swell are producing this mess. Sometimes the mizzen sail jibes uncontrolled as I struggle with wind tide swell and current. Even though the pass is over half a mile wide, it still seems too narrow for comfort as we fight to enter the mixmaster. A shrimp boat is plowing east bound, outriggers down, fish in the water to reduce the hellish roll. Another shrimper is heading inbound, slicing through the same water I struggle with, engines blazing. I however, am a sailor, and will try and conquer this beast with just the wind.

 Even though the waves are probably not more than six to eight feet high here, the spacing is so close, and the faces are so steep that they actually break wildly at times in thirty feet of water. Finally I lose control trying to get the jib to fill and the nose goes north, and just keeps going past as we are caught by the current trying to suck us back out of the pass and into the face of the waves, so I switch on the engine and motor back up the pitching, heaving pass until near Barracuda bay, where I shove the boat to a beam reach, and I switch off the iron genny, letting the wind take over.

We continue back towards Port Isabel, again well balanced, sails drawing like a living animal, once again enjoying the day, having a cold beverage and a sandwich as the sun starts to settle down on its exit from the overcast sky. George catches up with us again and remarks about the beating he saw us taking at the pass. No kidding. We are both tired, but grateful to be out of the mixmaster.

We stow the canvas near the marker, and motor to the slip without incident. Back in port, we fold and bag the sails, clean up the deck and house, and kick back in the cockpit for a cold beer and a snack before returning home. To our west is a 30-something sportfisherman that belongs to a live aboard. As far as I know, it doesn’t run, having a blown engine. It’s owner has dragged a large overstuffed sofa out onto the back deck so that he can sit there, fantasize about being at sea, and watch the show at the public ramp while people dock up after being out on the bay all day long. Makes good comedy.

The other day he came by Olivia while I was sitting on the deck with Rene drinking a beer, and was telling me about hearing our “cute little engine” running, how he thought highly of our “little boat”, sort of giving it the snobby elitist attitude of a “big boat” owner. I thought about that as I enjoyed my beer last night. There’s a lot of “bigger” boats in the harbor, big sailboats too… thirty five to forty five footers whose owners never even hardly check on them. People who got the Jimmy Buffett dream after listening to “Margaritaville” and “Banana Republics” too many times, and decided they wanted to sail off into the tropical idyllic sunset, then found out the reality of the situation.

Sailboats are slow. Sailboat motion is different, sometimes close to annoying in the wrong combination of sail and sea, and sailing is hard work.

Sometimes you have to face the mixmaster, get the daylights pounded out of you, have to look for creative solutions to problems involving the infinite combination of wind and water, and not always the solutions you thought might work either. In that way sailing is akin to life itself, ever changing, never static. So the big boat owners with the Jimmy Buffett dream soon lose interest, and their boats become a part of the Marina, unattended and deteriorating, the way dreams that don’t always turn out the way they were dreamed seem to do.

Olivia is fully operational once again, and I am thankful. I will soon be adding a couple of beanbags down below for comfort, they sure will be nice in the cockpit too.

But no overstuffed sofas up there for me, please. I’d rather live the dream than dream the dream, even if it sometimes borders on being a nightmare…...