March, 25th. We finally headed out after 24 days
of being delayed from our original date of March 1st by weather and
other things that popped up. When
traveling by motor boat, rain and wind is not your friend! At 6:50 am we pulled out of our slip at
Portofino and headed for our first stop at Taylor Outfall to anchor for the
night.
Bye bye Clear Lake...
...Hello Galveston Bay
Low winds and wave action do not always coincide and like
always we rocked and rolled all the way to Galveston. Teak and I were not happy! This is the only part of boating that I
dislike. Once we entered the ICW we had
to maneuver through TOW CITY BOLIVAR.
We
were so used to rocking and rolling, so what’s a little more with all the prop-wash
coming at us from both sides? Some tows
pulled their throttles back for us but most were just idling so you just had to swerve
your way through the churned up water. By 10:30 we were
out of the mess and had smooth running until later in the afternoon when we
caught up to six tows in a row. Some of
the tows were double wide and some single and they were playing hopscotch with each other. The ICW is only so wide and sometimes when
another tow was coming from the other direction it appeared like the tows just stopped or
possibly ran aground. We were in the
middle of a TOW JAM! Not a warm and
fuzzy feeling when a tow in front of you stops, a tow is passing going the
other direction and the tow you just passed behind you is coming up on you fast. Those big boys would make pick up
sticks out of us!!!!!!
We entered Taylor Outfall around 5:00 pm, dropped the hook
and settled in for a peaceful evening.
March 26. We pulled up our anchor, washing the mud off little
by little as we pulled the chain up. We started heading on our way at 7:30 am.
Bye bye Taylor Outfall!
Debris from Sabine River
Saw our first "man cave" at the Texas / Louisiana border
First pleasure boat encounter!
Ellender Bridge
This tow boat looked funny as it was coming towards us. Kinda looked like a caterpillar!
Second pleasure boat encounter, They are Lake Arthur boaters!
Lake Charles here we come!
We had a great day on the water all the way to Lake Charles where Curtis and Diane were waiting to catch our lines. We were not sure what slip we would pull into so they were nice enough to put out a bumper on Al and Kay’s boat just in case, see picture below! LOL
While we were settling in, Curtis and Diane headed over to Bow Tie for fuel because Bow Tie was going to be closed on Sunday and Monday. After they got back, we headed into town for dinner. Restaurants come and go in Lake Charles so we ended up trying a new restaurant named Blue Dog and the food was really rich and good!
