Saturday, October 5, 2013

The prepping for the sailing trip is complete

We are planning a sailing trip down the texas coast this coming week.  The plan is to sail from Kemah to Corpus.  The big question is which route to take.  As you can imagine if you are from this area, we are keeping a close eye out on Tropical Storm Karen that is still out in the Gulf and heading North and expected to go East.

Based on weather and wind predictions, we are expecting some pretty strong winds, 25-30 or so on Sunday, so we are planning on making the first part of the trip on the "inside".  This means that rather than sail 15 miles off shore in the Gulf of Mexico, that we would sail (likely motor) along the intercoastal waterway for part of it.

The plan is to leave the dock Saturday by 10am.  We will stop and fuel up before heading out into Galveston Bay and we plan on just taking the InterCoastal to Dickson Texas and stopping at HarborWalk Marina (Larry, if you and "clocked out" are there, let me know).   This will make the first day a pretty easy trip. it is about 30 nautical miles.

The second day, (Sunday) we plan to stay on the inside and go to Freeport Texas and stay in a Marina, where we can top off on fuel one more time before the "rest of the trip"

The current plan, and I mean current because it can change based on weather and wind, is to then sail from Freeport to Aransas Pass on the "outside".   For us the outside will mean between 12 and 15 miles off the coast.  There is a "safety zone" there where it is prohibited to have drilling platforms, etc.  This will make the night sails safer since some of the oil rigs in the Gulf are not lit at night.

I will continue to Post as we progress and where I have a connection.     I spent some time tonight setting up the network on the boat to allow the Chartplotter at the Helm to also have "AIS" overlay which shows commercial ships and any potential courses where there is a chance of collision based on their heading and speed as well as ours.