March 25th and 26th, 2016 Clear Lake to Lake Charles

March, 25^th. We finally headed out after 24 days of being delayed from our original date of March 1^st 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!