Leg 1-Galveston Bay to Tampa Bay Dec 1, 2019-Dec 8, 2019

Boat:  S/V Escondida

Location: Galveston Yacht Harbor

Time: 7:30 A,M. CST

Wind: North 22 knots, 28 knot gusts

Waves: Choppy 4-6, building to 8

Skies: Clear

Temperature:  57

Destination: Florida-Ft. Myers area, or somewhere close

  

    Run with the North wind he says!!!!!!!!

    The first two and a half days were quite an adventure until we turned south of the safety fairway and started heading east.  We got broadsided with a few walls of water that doused whoever was on watch and we got those opportunities to appreciate our foul weather gear and those easy to grab snacks that we always keep for that kind of weather.  About halfway through the third day our waves turned to glass.

   All in all, we motored 420ish miles over glassy seas, with an occasional 2-4 knot wind on the nose.  Several attempts 

were made to sail in any direction; we were vacillating between Carabelle and Key West.  Ultimately our fuel onboard and the lack of wind decided that we were going to Tampa.  After running the engine for 95 hours we pulled into Tampa with roughly 7 gallons of diesel left in the tank, total consumed for the trip was 33 gallons.

   Good thing we ended up in Tampa/Palmetto, arriving at the dock found us in the company of friends and acquaintances from Kemah!  There was a pretty sizeable list of things to fix while here that didn’t really fail on the trip, but needed a trip to knock the bugs out of them.  For starters, the watermaker that had worked flawlessly while testing in Kemah using a bucket of artificial ocean, leaked in several spots while processing actual ocean.  The aft stays on the mizzen mast needed to be tightened, the jib halyard let go of the headsail just before sunset on the third night (my fault for screwing up the termination and leaving it as good enough).  But most of all, the fuel injectors on the engine were at the age that Kubota recommends servicing them, after running for almost a hundred hours at near idle speeds, they were in need of attention.  Hopefully the engine purrs when I put the rebuilt injectors back in it!! Update: engine is purring.

   If all goes well, we’re going to continue heading south to Fort Myers Saturday the 14^th or Sunday the 15^th.   Update:  we are readying to leave today, Saturday Dec. 14th.  We'll try to post again when we have internet.

We’ll have more pictures as we get along.  For now all we have are some of the amazing sunsets that are worth the 30 knot winds and 8 foot seas.  We will miss our friends here as we miss our friends in Texas and look forward to making new ones.