Olivia has officially started her summer vacation.

She is now lying on the south end of South Padre Island in the middle of all the action. A stones throw from Dirty Al's where they serve up the best crab fingers in the world....imagine all of those poor crabs minus fingers....how will  they ever be able to eat?....thank goodness those PETA people haven't picked that one up yet!....but as usual I digress......

......The dock fees are exhorbitant, but.....we're only a half hour under sail to the mouth of the Brazos Santiago Pass, and the open Gulf of Mexico. That's right, a half hour.

On Friday night, I tried to plug in our 30 amp shore power connection only to find that the fancy new dock boxes here are wired for 50 amp 125-250 volt connections, and so I resigned myself to being without power, without the almighty air conditioning for the night. It is hot here right now, and even out on this finger of sand, it is humid and uncomfortable without an artificial climate....or at least I thought...

.... And I haven't ordered one of the most necessary pieces of gear yet, a wind scoop for the forward hatch, so I set about brainstorming a reasonable facsimile...what to use?...what to use?.....And then it dawned on me...the babysail ! the one that fits the stay right in front of the V berth hatch, and so I rigged it up on a single hank, attached the halyard and ran it up, tied the clew and luff to the boat hook, stuffed the whole thing down the hatch, opened up all of the portlights, and pretty soon a tropical breeze was flowing down Olivias interior.

I slept like a baby.

The dock where we lay for the summer is an eclectic mix of sea dogs, and so we fit right in. There's a few big Bertrams and other offshore boats. Friday night their skippers were all preparing for some offshore time, loud parties hosted on spacious back decks. Across the harbor, at the pretentious Sea Ranch restaurant, some local crooner was belting out tunes to the accompaniment of an electric piano, trying hard to sound like Frank Sinatra, but instead sounding a bit like Frank Enstien... The park was full of RV's and all of the gente from points other than here were sitting under their awnings with barbeques blazing, sitting in circles, drinking. Schlitterbahn had closed down, and a long string of cars stretched from there, all the way across the bridge, the line bifurcating north up the island , a slow moving parade of people heading out to watch  the fireworks display which filled the frantic night with neon blossoms and groups of inlanders who come to the island to behave badly, reveling up and down the streets from Louies to Coconuts..... All the while I sat on the back deck softly picking my old 5 string, watching the crowd roar by and existing in the temporal....on the surface.

It feels nice to get the open breeze here, and not worry about tides in order to get in and out of the harbor, so I justify (or try to) the increased cost by all of the increased (ahem) benefits....

CB  is down from Austin. We had a few beverages with him last night at the brew pub, and I am bleary eyed this morning. But it seems as though I made a promise to sail manana, having the day off (June teenth....since when did that become a holiday?).

The weather looks right, with the summer wind pattern on us now, afternoon breezes 12-20, water aquamarine blue and seas less than 3 feet....pretty near perfect.

Oh, and no tropical weather on the immediate horizon (knock on teak).