Sunday, February 27, 2011

First sail in Galveston Bay

What a great sail.  We had friends visit from Dallas and all of us went out sailing.  It was a great time and it was a bit comforting to make that first sail on salt water in our boat with others.
We went from the Marina, through Clear Lake to the Channel that goes under the Kemah Bridge.  We motored past the Kemah Boardwalk and out through the channel and to about channel marker 3.  At that point we turned a bit to port and flew the jib only. (Mains'l is getting repaired and wasn't ready).

It was a bit foggy which turned out to be great because it allowed me to "sail out of sight of land" on our first outing.  We went about 7 miles out toward the Houston Ship Channel.  When we were pretty close and tacked we had a group of 4 to 6 dolphins join us and just keep surfacing all around the boat. 
It was the coolest thing to experience on our first sail here.


As you can imagine, Deb and I were thrilled with one more step in the direction of our ultimate dream.  We had a great time and I think you can see how happy we were just based on the look on our faces.  Deb tried to take this picture at "arms length" several times but with us bouncing around in the chop, we weren't able to get it. 
Thank you Karen for taking the picture to capture the moment.