Saturday Sail

A few weeks ago, we did a weekend trip with a few other friends at our marina! We hadn't really planned too much, other than to get away from the dock for a night or two. Friday afternoon we pulled out of our slip and went towards Redfish Island. This was our gorgeous view of the sun setting over Kemah!!

We arrived just after sunset and decided to anchor for the night. There were three other boats there with us, for the night. We all took our dinghy's over to Tom's boat and ate & hung out before heading back to our own boats to go to sleep. 

There's something great about being anchored and feeling the boat move with the water versus feeling little to no movement while being tied to the dock. I miss this more than I can say (at least in the daytime, when I can clearly see that we are not going to hit anything). 

There were no bugs out and the weather was cool, but not too cold, so hubs and I decided to sleep in the cockpit. Around 3:37am the wind picked up more than what was forecasted and at this point I was awake. Mostly, because of the headache that woke me up, but also because I'm always too worried that we we are going to drag anchor, I'm sitting up every few minutes and making sure we are not closer to the surrounding boats and so I can't really get any good sleep. It's like whenever I take a roadtrip with anyone. I cannot fall asleep for nothing, even when I've been awake for thirty-six straight hours, I just can't do it. I feel like I have to be the lookout person, at all times. About three hours later though, I decided Joe could be the lookout person for awhile and I went down below to catch some Zzz's before our day sail! 

We slept in a little bit and then I whipped us up some oven French toast!!! Yum :)

I felt like a real-live cruiser, complete with my collapsible tea kettle, heating the water for my coffee in a pour-over coffee maker and the toast about to go in the propane oven. I think I'm getting the hang of this no electricity needed, way of life!! 

After breakfast and a quick cleanup, we pulled up anchor and radioed over to our friends about the day's plan. We were going to go with one of the boats, that had anchored with us the night before and sail to Galveston for the day, but they decided they wanted to hang out in the bay instead. It's all good, we thought, were still gonna go, because we could, so we did! :)

We stayed just outside the ship channel and sailed all the way down to where the cruise ships come in and out of port. We kept seeing flares shooting up into the sky, followed by a thick cloud of orange smoke.

There were no distress calls heard over the radio, so we figured it had to be some sort of a training or an authorized removal of expired flares. Sure enough, we later realized, that was being done at the Coast Guard Auxillary Station and all was well. 

We cruised around a bit and got up close and personal with World War II history! Seawolf Park is a memorial to USS Seawolf, a United States Navy Sargo-class submarine mistakenly sunk by U.S. Navy forces in 1944 during World War II. It is located on Pelican Island, (29°20′03″N 94°46′45″W) just north of Galveston. You can read more about the submarine and ship here. 

We then sailed back to Kemah...

We went no where in particular and it took us all day to get there and back, but that's just one more thing we can say we did on our boat. Plus, you gain experience each time you take your boat out. And well, isn't that what everyone should do?