Last week, the commander called me. I could hear him over the wind noise. “Are you sailing?” I queried. “No, driving” he shot back. “And, when I left Brownsville, I had just enough fuel to make it to the island…..and I’m right at the island” he continued. “You wanna know how I know I’m at the island?” he said. “Cause, I am out of fuel”. I could hear him pounding on the dash.

A little while later I met him over at his lab, and we went to Fish Bones.

I think I'll start off with a margarita....

Chuckling, he finished his out-of-fuel story. “Yep, I ran out of fuel right at the crest of the bridge, coasted all the way to the gas station, through red lights and everything. How’s that for luck?”

The commander is a man of natural talent and fine karma, luck seems to follow him like a seagull follows a picnic.

I think it was over the second ‘rita when I committed to riding with him aboard Renaissance on Saturday, along with AR, our County Marine Extension Agents’ son.  AR is one of the commanders protégés, and had come up with the idea that perhaps there is a dead zone a la Mississippi River at the mouth of the Rio Grande. So a hastily planned scientific sampling/sailing trip was in order.

The commander had been bamboozled.

This entire weekend was a bit ominous, we are still in the heart of this squirrelly tropical pattern. As a matter of fact, it looks possible that we might just get some more later this week. There had been thunderstorms and rain in the early morning hours on Saturday, but I managed to drag myself up anyway. Having not heard from the commander, I was wondering whether or not he had cancelled the trip. Perhaps he was Taquache after another marathon at the C& C wings, or maybe a bit too many naked wings and Bentley sauce at Hooters the night before….

 Around 0930 though, the phone rang, the commander on the other end saying that they had come back in because AR had forgotten his data sheets. The commander had figured that I’d have called him, but I figured he would have called me, and so I almost got left ashore. Seizing the opportunity  and my own good fortune, I grabbed my oilies and so’wester, jumped in the Caddy and rolled off to Puerto Isabel.

At the dock, the commander was deep in conversation with his engine, looking up only to ask for a bucket to swab up some offending oil, telling me that the thing had just quit running out there, near the power lines and could I handle this filter please? He had changed the secondary filter, fired the engine up, but it still seemed to be running rough. The idle sounded low to me too, but I figured it would clear out once we were underway and in gear, and so before too long, we steamed out of the Port O’ Call and headed towards the Brazos Pass, dodging para sailers and sport fisherman in the calm overcast of an early Saturday fall morning on the Laguna Madre.

Past the power lines and the throttle just kept having to be advanced further and further to maintain the same RPM until it was almost all the way to the firewall. We tossed around various troubleshooting scenarios. Hmmmmm….could be a dirty filter, but then again maybe the fuel pump was starting to go kaput….or maybe the injection pump itself….could it be dirty injectors? We reasoned and rejected each cause, and then it suddenly occurred to me what might really be wrong. I’d had this happen when we delivered Olivia, having run aground in the ICW, and trying to back off, the throttle cable came completely unglued. Tiny parts scattered everywhere, mostly in the bilge, and thank goodness for vice grips…. “Hey David, check the throttle cable terminal at the pump body”…..

Sure enough, loose connection, a quick tightening, and we were again steaming towards the pass.

We tugged up the canvas near Barracuda Bay, and let AR have the tiller. It was his first time aboard a sailboat of any kind. Several tacks later, we were in the open Gulf, heading south some 8 miles down to the mouth of the river. The line of demarcation between two countries, on the other side, the promised land, dare not set foot there today though…no permiso pinche gringos.

The water was blue, and filled with sargassum and feeding Spanish Mackerel. We put a line over the side and trolled, but it wasn’t long before the spoon foul hooked what I thought was a clump of sargassum. On hauling it up though, lo and behold….a miniature tarpon, all four inches of him, with a prong of the giant treble hook protruding from one cheek. He had ambushed a lure almost as big as himself. I guess I used to eat like that when I was young too.

And, about this point, we lost wind, fired up the iron genny and once again steamed off in the general direction of our destination, further south and some half mile off of the beach. We left the canvas up, even though only little kitty paws disturbed the azure water.

On site, we hove Renaissance to, while AR attempted to collect data. Of course, old Ben Franklin really was right, haste does make waste, and the attempt to collect data ended when a small part of a sampling device shot off of it’s surgical rubber strap like a tiny depth charge, landing behind our stern with a hollow plunk, instantly sinking through the beautiful blue water to the depths, some 25 feet below the keel.

End of sampling day.

The mystery as to whether or not the Rio Grande River really hosts a dead zone would remain a mystery, waiting for preparedness and redundancy to rule on another day.

Ahhhh, but why worry, is life long enough for that sort of nonsense? We had canvas, we had beer,  we had roast beef sandwiches, and we were just beginning to get a little breeze.

Heading north, back towards the Brazos jetties, we glided along at about three to four knots, giving AR a hard time, and just generally swapping stories and lies. It certainly was not a wasted day. What day sailing is wasted?

The wind finally ran out again once we were back in the bay, near the power lines, and the commander stowed the canvas as we chugged through the glassy bay back to the slip.

Yesterday, I took my dad out with Noe aboard Fish-Tales for a dolphin watch, for me another Tale collecting trip, so stand by later this week….

Not many flippers, but as we cruised up the Y, a beautiful waterspout formed out of some black clouds over the Bay near where we live in Laguna Vista.