Galveston

Pelican Island Bridge

We decided to stay a few days in Galveston just to do some maintenance such as oil changes and see the town, rather how it changes after the hurricane. The first night was spent just getting over the eleven and one half hours of motor sailing from Matagorda to the area. We faced high cold winds on the nose all the way. The tow traffic was, at times; pretty heavy but the AIS system which reports transponder signals from commercial vessels was really a great addition to the boat. It allows us to see the name and other information about oncoming traffic in the area. Before AIS, we had to guess at the name of the vessels and their location then place a call “westbound tow at (about) marker X, this is the eastbound sailboat approaching marker Y”. There is a great deal of slop in that communication. Now, we call “Marie Bordelon, this is the eastbound sailboat one mile”. We get a great deal of courtesy doing that and the tows are very helpful when they know our intentions. We did hear one two asking another sailboat to slow down to avoid a tight situation with two passing tows, to which the sailboat captain offered some colorful negative comments. The tow captain said that he would return the favor some day. It seems the sailboater was about to give us all a bad name and may have the mistaken belief that sailboats have the right of way over tows. Two rules come into play here. First, there is the basic rule of tonnage. The tow is big with lots of horsepower. Secondly, there are the rules of navigation. The tow has the right of way.

Anyway, we sailed under the Pelican Island bridge into Galveston Harbor at around noon on Sunday. This is a busy harbor with cruise ships, and many petroleum related vessels. It was good to tie up and hit the showers on land. As always, the walk to the office was quite long but good exercise. Now in port, what does one do? The obvious is to clean the boat and talk to other boaters. This place had 49 or so sailboats tied up in the transient are during the hurricane. Only 6 survived and of them, most took serious damage. The water rose about 12 feet over the docks where they were tied. Nevertheless, with all the devastation, one can hardly tell it around the harbor. This city hit the ground running and fully functional in a very short time, as compared to New Orleans.

This is day 8 and we will rent a car today to get some things done such as laundry and some minor boat shopping. We really have not missed the car yet but as we were told, land transportation is hard to be without. We do have a pair of small folding bicycles and that will be our means, just as soon as Bear quits referring to me as a “circus bear” when I am on it.