Arrival and Day One

We signed up for coastal navigation classes at the Bay Area Sailing School in Kemah, Texas.  It’s a three day course combining actually a couple of ASA courses, Basic Coastal Cruising and Bareboat Chartering.  It started Friday morning with orientation at 9:00.

We of course signed up for the class with Terry and Christine, our sailing comrades.  We took a couple of days’ vacation in order to arrive the night before, have some dinner, and generally chill out before class.  We stayed at the South Shore Harbor Resort complex fairly close to the marina where the school is, it’s a pretty nice place.

s/v Sails Call

Orientation consisted of climbing aboard s/v Sails Call, a 39′ Beneteau monohull, exploring and discovering where everything is – heads, fridge, berths, life jackets, sail lines, sail lockers, lazerettes, anchor, winches, etc.  After that we went back to the school building for our sail briefing.

Capitain Dave pulled out a large chart of the Houston Ship Channel and Galveston Bay.  He asked us some basic questions, to make sure that we really did know the basics from our 101 class.  We talked about our previous sail experiences in the BVI and other places.  Now on to the chart…

Clear Lake – Kemah Chart

He pointed out where we were on the chart, and gave an outline for where we would go on the course.  We would start in Kemah, sail out to a slip on Galveston Island off the Galveston Channel.  That would take us a couple of hours to complete, we would have to transit out to the Houston Ship Channel (HSC) and head southeast toward Galveston.  We would stay overnight on the boat in the marina.  The next day would take us back out to the HSC, further southeast out past Galveston Island, past the jettys and out to the open seas of the Gulf of Mexico.  After sailing on open water we’d return back to the slip in the Galveston marina for another night, and then on Sunday we’d sail back to Kemah.  Hey it all sounded good to us, but learning is in the doing, right?

Houston Ship Channel

Terry at the helm

Terry backed the boat out of the slip, cleared us out of the marina and we headed downstream out of Clear Lake, past some really nice houses, the Kemah amusement park and entertainment/dining center, and underneath the huge bridge that allows tall ships to pass under.  Once we were out in the bay we raised the sails and motor-sailed out to the HSC.  We learned that the Galveston bay is quite shallow, usually about 10 to 3 ft deep everywhere.

So that kept us close to the dredged channels that were maintained between 20-40 feet depths to accommodate the commercial vessels.  We sailed on a starboard beam reach until reaching the HSC.  Turning to starboard to head down the channel we quickly discovered that the wind and current were totally not cooperative to our lessons.  We were heading southeast in the HSC and that’s exactly where the wind was coming from.  We dropped sails and motored for several hours.  I think this is when after everyone had had their turn at the helm it became my turn.  We had originally planned to reach the Galveston marina before nightfall but we weren’t making good time against the strong wind and current.  With Captain Dave’s guidance I piloted down the Galveston Ship Channel after sundown, past the sunken concrete ship (yes they do make ships out of concrete) and parked in the slip at the marina.  We secured everything and headed out to a local restaurant for dinner.  After that it was time to call it a night because class started early the next day, Saturday.

Galveston Bay Sunset

Houston Ship Channel

Day Two

Docking/Undocking Drills

On Saturday morning Judith piloted the boat out of the slip this time and after everyone got practice docking and undocking the boat in its slip, we went to an area nearby where we practiced dropping and setting the anchor.

There’s a heck of a lot more to anchoring a boat than merely tossing a heavy object tied to a chain overboard.  You have to know how deep the water is in order to let out the correct amount of line for your depth.

Then you have to back down on the anchor, backing the craft away from the anchor hoping that it will dig in to the sea bed to get a solid holding.  Christine and I had the duty to bring the anchor back up on the boat after we had done our drills.  Man, that thing was filthy when we lifted it out of the water, it brought up a bunch of muck with it from the bottom of the channel.  We had to be real careful not to get any of that crap on us, not an easy task while working with an awkwardly balanced 50 lb hunk of metal.  After that exercise, we went back out to the HSC, continuing our way down the channel out to the Gulf.  But it was the same story as Friday, wind and current were strong against us, so we didn’t raise the sails and motored down the channel while giving wide berth to the HUGE commercial sea transports and barges coming and going from the Port of Houston.

Now the ship channel is pretty big, like 200 yards wide on average and that has to accommodate ships traveling both directions.  So it’s very much like a surface road but without a stripe down the middle.  Just like a street you have to stick to the right, opposing traffic should always pass you on the port side.

Heavy Traffic

There’s not a lot of leeway with those big boats and barges that can’t leave the channel or they’ll run aground in the shallow bay.  And because of the dredging it is actually very shallow just outside the channel, like three or four feet depth in some places.  You have to keep an eye on the channel marker buoys and watch out for the traffic.  These commercial cargo ships are big, like the one that rescued Tom Hanks in Castaway.  And we were close, sometimes as close as 75 feet or so, and we didn’t want to get much closer.

Dolphins!

Steadily against the wind and current we slugged our way toward the Gulf.  We were past Galveston Island, but not past the jetties which shelter the HSC and help break up the waves on the way in and out.  Finally we were out past the jetties but not too far out and it was time to hoist the sails.  We cut the engine back and pointed into the wind and started our task.

Hoist the main sail!!

However just as the sails were up the diesel heat alarm went off and we had to cut the engine.  We had really tasked the engine against the wind and current and it was running very hot, but because it was being cooled by the sea water pumping through it there wasn’t any issue while we were under way.  But when we backed the throttle down in order to raise the sails, that reduced the amount of cooling sea water going through it and the engine overheated.  So we had to turn it off.

Danger! Jetties!

But we weren’t out far enough away from the jetties yet, and we were being blown back into them.  We couldn’t turn starboard as we’d either hit the jetty or likely become grounded.  We couldn’t turn port because that would put us directly in the traffic of the country’s third busiest shipping channel.  And with no motor currently available we had to surrender, we gave up going out to the Gulf and merely turned around and headed back toward the Galveston marina under sail.

Coasties

Just before reaching the Galveston Ship Channel I was the helm hog again and took the helm tacking west along the channel.  It was a busy little channel and we had to dodge and weave around all the traffic; barges, ferries, pleasure craft, shrimp boats, Coast Guard, etc…  We passed by a couple of cruise ships, one of the cruise ships was the same one that we were guests on about 4 months earlier.

Galveston Marina

When we got to the end of the channel Terry took the helm and we turned around and tacked our way back to the marina.  After Terry took the boat in to dock it in our slip, we brought out the food for a on-board prepared and cooked meal.  Steaks and salad and veggies and of course beer and boat drinks.   We stayed up talking with Captain Dave and we all had a good time.

Galveston Marina

Tomorrow we were to head back to Kemah.

Day Three

Well, remember all that uncooperative current and wind?  On Sunday it turned out to be a real blessing.  The ride back was a sailing dream.  Our foes the wind and current became our friends and it was truly amazing.

Wing-on-Wing

Wing-on-wing is when you’re sailing downwind and you have the jib let all the way out to one side and the main sail is let all the way out on the other side.  Now sailing this way isn’t so much of a challenge if you can change direction as necessary to stay nearly directly down wind.

Downwind

But we were constrained by the channel and really couldn’t deviate from the course.  We were very lucky that we were able to go wing-on-wing without having to change direction for about three or four hours, with Christine at the helm almost the whole way.  It was so peaceful we were able to get some last minute studying and exam cramming in.

We eventually took turns at the helm, and of course I was hogging the helm again when we had to turn westerly to head toward Clear Lake.  All of that strong wind peacefully pushing us down wind was about to change.  Christine and Judith were below deck and were completely unaware of the pending direction change.  They were eating gummy bears at the time when their world was about to be turned sideways without warning!  At buoy #63 we jibed to port and the Beneteau heeled way over in the strong breeze.  All the guys were topside and we heard screams and laughter from down below.  Terry took the helm I went below to see what the commotion was…  Judith and Christine were falling all over the place, laughing up a storm, stumbling around because they wouldn’t let go of the gummy bears in their hands to grab something else to stabilize on.  It was hilarious.

Man Overboard Drills

On the way back to Clear Lake we were in a relatively deeper part of the bay where we started our man overboard drills.  Everyone was assigned a duty – helmsman, spotter, sails, and hooker.  The hooker is the one with the boat hook that picks up “Sally” out of the water with a boat hook when the boat gets to her.  Sally is a bright orange boat fender with a weight and a tussle of blonde rope frays on top.  Sally goes overboard and everyone kicks into action for rescue drills.  After a couple of drills we had something go wrong with the boat’s jib sail rigging in the middle of the drill and we (that would be, um, me :-/ ) lost sight of Sally.  It is really hard trying to find a small thing in a big bay if you don’t know where it is.  After we fixed the rigging, we set about searching for Sally.  About half an hour or 45 minutes of looking we were ready to give up, but luckily we spotted Sally adrift in the distance and were able to rescue her.  We spent about 2 hours on the man overboard drills.  When everyone had their turn at the helm for the rescue, it was time to head back to Kemah.

The sail back to home port was fairly smooth and uneventful, back to sightseeing the big houses on the channel and other sail and power boats making their ways along the lake.

Kemah

Pulling into the slip, however, brought some excitement.  Judith was at the helm and there was a strong southerly wind.  The dock was perpendicular to the wind and the slip we needed to pull into was upwind and we had to turn port to do it.  Per the Captain’s instruction, Judith needed to be very close to the slips on the starboard side in order to swing the craft into the slip.  Judith, being the “question authority” person she is, asked Captain Dave if she was too close to the opposite pier, but Captain Dave said she needed to be even closer.  Alas, with the strong wind we were pushed so close to the slips on the starboard side we clipped a bow spirit railing of another boat with a loud “clang” noise!  By this time we had missed our turn to get into our slip, so Cap’n Dave took over and backed the boat up so we could try it again.  Also because of this minor collision that everyone in the marina heard, we started to get attention from people on the docks.

Cap’n Dave started the second approach, again on the starboard side of the dock channel.  Naturally the wind blew strong and all of us on board had to fend off from running into the boats and piers on the opposite side of our slip.  Yep, another collision occurred, “clang!”.  But this time we were able to turn in time to pull in to the slip.  The boat’s owner had come down to wait for us at the slip – I’m sure he had heard the ruckus at the dock.  Everything was all right however, there was no damage at all to any of the equipment involved except for maybe a couple of scrape marks on the stainless railings.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in examination preparation and taking our exams.  They were graded on the spot by Captain Dave and we all passed.  I think Judith got a point or two higher score than I, drat.  Well there’s always the Celestial Navigation class that we plan on taking…

Kemah Sunset

Plans now call for Terry and Christine taking their first bareboat charter this week.  They’ve gone to the BVI with their daughter and two other parties.  We can’t wait to hear about their adventures about their inaugural bareboat sail.  Wish we were going with them, but we’re going to have to wait until next spring for that.

Oh, and here’s what a sunken concrete boat looks like.

Concrete Boat

At the end of the month we’re setting off for a long weekend of sailing classes.  These classes will be the last of the bare minimum of classes required in order to book a  bareboat charter.  Bareboat you ask?  Well…

s/v Lionheart, Village Cay Marina, Road Town, Tortola, BVI

It all stared in 2008 with a vacation to the British Virgin Islands.  Terry and Christine invited us and two other couples to charter a 48′ catamaran that came with a captain.  We needed a captain because none of us knew diddly squat about how to operate a sailboat, let alone one that big.  Besides, this captain was quite familiar with the area and was a wonderful guide and we needed him for that, too.  Despite our floating adventure in the islands being cut short by hurricane Omar (and that’s a whole other story), I really enjoyed the time on the water and became fascinated with sailing and sailboats.  I did a lot of research on line, learning about boat and sailing lingo, boat parts, knots, reading sailing stories and blogs of sailing families and such.  The more I read the more I wanted to learn and do.  Best of all was that Judith is on board with this also.

Simon Cowell's ship at Barbados

We went on a week-long cruise to the Caribbean in a big cruise ship in late 2009. Although those boats are much more stable than the catamaran we chartered in the BVI, while it was under way I could feel the smooth rocking of the vessel pushing through the waves.  Pure relaxing bliss.  One of the excursions was in Barbados where we had a locally prepared home-made lunch on a catamaran and went snorkeling with sea turtles.  How cool is that!

We talked about going back to the BVI for another week vacation, but this time we didn’t want to hire a skipper.  We wanted to skipper a boat by ourselves.  That’s what’s called a bareboat charter.  You rent a big boat out and sail around with you and your friends as the captain and after a week you bring the boat back.  Here’s the rub though, no charter company will rent you their $350,000 boat if you don’t have bareboat experience.  Kind of like how does one get a job without experience, and how do you get experience if you can’t get a job?  So here’s how, you go and get yourself educated and take classes for bareboat certification.

Judith and I discussed taking introductory sailing classes locally, and with a bit of research we decided on Island Bound Adventures on Lake Grapevine.  American Sailing Association class 101 – Basic Keelboat.  Four hours of class time, two days on the water.  And naturally we signed up for class with our friends Terry and Christine; we are still all in this together.  You have to identify boat parts, tie knots, learn points of sail, right of way, safety requirements, U.S. Coast Guard regulations, and much, much more.  The study and training materials arrived in the mail and we dove into it straight away.

Island Bound Adventures Sailing School

ASA 101 class was fun, the weather was almost perfect and we all had a great time learning and piloting.  The instructors at Island Bound are excellent – patient, knowledgeable, and fun; they do enjoy getting to share their passion with newbies like us.  We all passed the exam with high marks but as I eeked out a one point higher grade than Judith… well, the challenge is on for the next batch of exams.

Now that I had the basic sailing class under my belt, I wanted to get back out on the water soon.  Hence the Hobie Cat purchase.

The next classes that are required are ASA 103 and 104.  ASA 103 is Basic Coastal Cruising.  ASA 104 is Bareboat Chartering (Intermediate Coastal Cruising).  Usually these classes are offered separately, but we found a sail school on the Gulf coast that combines them both at the same time.  It takes a long weekend for this combo, so we have to take a day or two of vacation from work.  But it also saves a few dollars because the cost of the combined class is less than the total cost of these two courses separately at other sail schools.

We’re very excited.

After picking up our little Hobie 16, I was very anxious to get it out on the water and try all the skills we had learned in ASA-101 class.  Couldn’t hardly hardly wait to get it out and on the lake.  This was a couple of Sundays ago.  Probably not the best choice, but alas we didn’t die and we did learn from our myriad of mistakes so it was an educational outing.  I had wanted to go on Saturday, but that day was spent putting on the replacement trampoline, the original one was old, worn, and tattered; on the brink of collapsing at any moment.  We bought a used tramp to replace it but it looks great.

From the start I should have known.  After we left the house we realized we forgot to bring the life jackets.  Uggh, turn around and add another 30-45 minutes to our start time.  When we arrived at the lake around 2:00 or so, we set out to rig the boat for sailing.  As we’ve never done this before, and had only witnessed the previous boat owner go through the setup once, we immediately attracted attention from other sailors at Hobie Point who came over to help.

After watching us struggle a bit, Lil says “That’s not gonna work.”

Right.  So with some – well OK – a lot of help we raised the mast which is by far the most difficult part of rigging this vessel.  We backed it off the trailer into the mucky water and hoisted the sails while we tried to figure out how everything went together.  We loaded and bungeed the cooler to the deck and lastly we attached the collapsible oar to the trampoline.  It took a long time but eventually we were off the shore moving by wind power alone!  Little did we know that the small amount of wind that got us out on the lake was quickly diminishing.

The previous owner had set up the rigging for racing with a “raked” mast, and this arrangement means that if you don’t turn through the wind fast enough you will just end up pointing into the wind like a weather vane.  Which happened on our first tack.  Almost everything we learned about tacking on a monohull simply did not work on the catamaran.  We were dead in the water and there wasn’t much we could do except to get frustrated.  We eventually did get turned sideways enough to catch the breeze and we were headed back to the shore and the wind died.  We were drifting to a halt.  And by now, the sun was going down due to our late start.

Judith says, “If I start swimming now I know I can make it to the shore.”

I was in a panic.  I picked up the oar that actually was a freebie thrown in with the tramp purchase and it never would have crossed my mind about getting one, let alone bringing one along, and started paddling frantically to turn the cat broadside to any available breeze.  Luckily a very light breeze picked up and carried us slowly and gently to shore.  We quickly beached the thing, packed the sails, put it on the trailer, de-rigged the mast, and locked it down on the trailer for transport just as the sun was going below the horizon.

Always check the wind forecast.  Always bring an oar or two.  Learn how it’s rigged and practice doing the rigging.  Don’t start too late.  Bring a cell phone on board, just in case.  It could’ve been much worse – to have been stranded on the lake after sundown with no wind and no lights.  Lessons learned.

I was getting ready to solo sail the little Hobie 16 catamaran.  My first truly single hand sailing adventure, and Judith had reluctantly agreed, usually she requires that I have some type of supervision when sailing.  When I arrived at Hobie point, no one was there.  So I set out to rig the boat.  All by myself I raised and set the mast, so proud.  Then I received a text from Terry saying that he was on his way and would be there in about half an hour.  OK that’s good, Terry and Christine are our sailing cohorts, and I think this would have been his first time out on the lake also without a seasoned captain.  So I waited for Terry.

Terry, prior to launch

In the meantime, another vessel pulled up on a trailer.  It was a Hobie 18, the owner came over and introduced himself as Matt.  We chatted briefly; turns out he used to be the owner of my boat!  Small world, huh.  He said that it was his first boat also.

Lee at the helm

Terry at the helm

Terry arrived and we set out on the lake.  The sailing was great.  Nice strong steady wind, we were really cutting through the waves, bouncing along.  Terry and I alternated taking the helm after tacks.  Tacking was a challenge as usual.  I have got to figure out how to tack that thing more efficiently!  Anyways, we were having a great time going back and forth by the dam, alternating at the tiller.

While on a port tack, close hauled, we were screaming along, bouncing on the water.  The wind must have really picked up.  Water spray off the starboard hull was flying everywhere, it looked really cool, so I grabbed the camera to snap a picture.  The instant I clicked the shutter is when the aft of the boat came up out of the water and we flipped over.  We had orchestrated somewhat of a pitch-pole maneuver that left us swimming in the drink.

Starboard hull submerged, this is what caused us to flip

“I can touch bottom.” Terry exclaims.

“Uhh, no, you’re standing on the jib.” I reply.

OK so now what?  What are we going to do now, seeing as the sailboat is lying on its side in the water in the middle of the lake?  Fortunately there is a mast float at the top of the mast that prevents the entire boat from turning upside down, with the mast sticking down below the surface.  I had read that we needed to point the hulls into the wind, and to do that you should stand on the aft part of the hull in the water.  We tried that and we flipped the cat over to the other side, onto the other hull.  We did this twice.  Great.  By this time now we started getting attention of other boaters and a couple of motor boats came by.  One big power boat threw us a hefty line, we started to wrap it around the hull that was up in the air and then Matt in his speedy Hobie 18 came by.  He jumped in the water, swam over, and showed us how to right the craft.  By “showed us how” of course I mean that he did most of the work.  Well at least I know now that it can be done.

After we were righted we wanted to make a bee-line right back to the shore.  The wind had really picked up and by this time we had been pushed by the wind while sideways and had drifted far, far away from the protected area near the dam and were almost literally in the middle of the lake.  With the increased wind the wave size was more than I had expected — they weren’t white-capping but it was close.  Also I thought that the boat hulls were sitting lower in the water than I had expected, I discovered later that there was more water in them than I thought should be, and perhaps that’s why they weren’t so buoyant.  So, needless to say it was some work to zig-zag our way back to our start point.  With the wind coming almost straight from the beach it meant sailing close hauled on the big wind over strong waves to get back.  It was some scary fun and took lots of concentration to manage because we sure didn’t want to tip over…. again.

Back on shore I brought over a Shiner beer to Matt and thanked him for his help.

There is a video of an Oracle sailing racing team capsizing very much the same way we did.  But their boat is much bigger and more costly to repair.  The only thing we needed fixing were our bruised egos.  That and I lost an insulated stainless steel mug and an almost brand new life preserver.  Terry lost his ball cap.  We both can’t wait to get back out on the water again.

The Oracle team capsize video can be found here.