Pride goeth before a storm

We have again escaped the boatyard, shoving off this morning after a quick stop at the pumpout dock. I am typing under way in the ICW, eastbound toward the Rigolets, retracing our steps out of lake Pontchartrain back in January. Yes, it really has been half a year.


New Orleans Pride.

Much has happened since I last posted here nine days ago. The yard plugged along, touching up all our rust spots and rebedding much of our hardware. They also touched up the couple of scratches we managed to put in the paint ourselves. The new bedding is more generous than the original and we are hopeful this will keep the rust at bay a bit longer.


Our view from Dat Dog. A lone guitarist is playing light jazz.

Summer is upon us now and that means full-on tourist season in New Orleans. After my last post we rode down to Frenchmen Street for a casual dinner at an old favorite, Dat Dog, where we again sat on the wrought-iron balcony to watch the goings-on on the street below. Live street music was the order of the day. This place has great dogs, great drafts, and great people watching. What's not to like?


Moments later he is eclipsed by this drum-and-brass combo. He just played right along.

The timing of our visit had us in New Orleans for a couple of festivals, and last Saturday afternoon we made dinner reservations at The Italian Barrel in the quarter, and headed down to the French Market to catch part of the Creole Tomato Festival.  Examples of every sort of dish made with Creole Tomatoes were available from several stands, and they had music on a stage by the Old Mint.

Main stage at the Creole Tomato Fest, near the Old Mint.

We did not sample any of the tomato dishes, but we did wander around the festival with a draft Abita in hand. It was good people-watching, and the live music was right up our alley. This, however, was just the relatively tame start to our evening; the festival ran from 10am to 7pm and we deliberately arrived toward the tail end of that  window.


Head end of the naked bike ride, just behind the police car.

On our scooter ride into town to our customary free parking spot, along a series of normally empty back streets, we had noticed an unusual backup of traffic. Glancing down the side streets we could see the police escorting some sort of bicycle ride toward the quarter, a few blocks away from us. We guessed it to be an event associated with the New Orleans Pride Festival, going on at Washington park.


This from-the-rear shot is the only other that was not NSFW.

As we stood near the stage at the Creole Tomato Festival, however, we were amused to find it was actually the annual World Naked Bike Ride. It was a hoot, and we were sorry we did not learn of it until after the fact -- we do have a couple of bicycles aboard Vector ;-) Like many other tourists (and locals), I took dozens of pictures, but this is a PG blog so you only get the tamer ones. Worth noting, though, that many children did get to watch it roll by -- a teachable moment.


A stand at the French Market. Tourists are in season.

After the ride whizzed by, we had enough time before dinner to walk a few blocks around the quarter and take in more of the festival and the typical summer weekend crowd in the quarter. And while I had not requested it when I made the reservation, we scored a nice sidewalk table for dinner, with a good view of the festival stage as well as the parade route for the main event.


Our dinner view, the side of the stage. Off-camera to the left is the parade route.

That event would, of course, be the annual Pride Parade. While small in comparison to events in, say, San Francisco or New York, New Orleans fields a respectable parade for Pride, and this town knows a few things about throwing a parade. Just like other NOLA parades, there are "throws" from some of the floats, and while I studiously avoided catching any beads (we have loads), I did score a pair of fuzzy dice from the Krewe of the Rolling Elvi, and we also landed a vuvuzela and a small pride flag.

New Orleans Pride, sponsored by Walgreens. This is the lead float.

We were happy our return visit coincided with Pride. It was particularly moving this year, coming, as it did, just two days before the anniversary of the Orlando nightclub shootings. That date, incidentally, was also the 50th anniversary of the landmark Loving v. Virginia decision. It's hard to believe it took 48 years for the Obergefell v. Hodges decision to extend the same protection to same-sex couples.

Grand Marshal.

Sunday we got a few things done around the boat and then went to dinner with our new friends Jana and Tom from Adagio Gul. We took the scooters, a familiar mode for them since they spent some time living in Taiwan. They immediately recognized the brand of my scoot, a Taiwanese model. It was the first time we've broken out the passenger helmets that we carry aboard Vector for just such an occasion.

Microsoft. A lot of hate gets posted via computer, but Google and Apple are also LGBTQ supportive companies.

Early this week we borrowed the yard's truck and did some provisioning. That included ten gallons of white vinegar to try to dissolve the crud in the black tank crossover pipe; we put all ten gallons in after pumping out this morning. We also used the truck for a hardware store run; I bought some fittings to make a holding tank vent filter, and a piece of plywood to try to make a more ergonomic sewing machine table for the quilt room.


This little bear that I caught as a parade throw at Mardi Gras is still "seated" in the truck's cupholder, where I left him.

Notwithstanding the yard's prediction that they would be done mid-week, it was the end of the day Thursday when they finally declared it. As such things often go, our own walk-around revealed several missed items that they needed to then address Friday. Things finally wrapped up around three o'clock yesterday afternoon.

Very happy to see our denomination represented.

Running so late in the week means we will miss the nice weather window we had to get across the gulf to Florida this weekend. So instead we are cruising more slowly eastward along the gulf coast, hoping for another window in perhaps a week. Also, you will note we are on the ICW instead of the river; we were advised that sections of South Pass might be too shallow for Vector without good local knowledge. The last thing we want to do is run aground with three knots of current astern.

As much as I would have liked to have done the last hundred miles of the Mississippi, I'm equally happy to be going this way, because the stretch of ICW between the Rigolets and Mobile Bay is the only section of waterway in the entire country that we've not done. So a week from now we'll be able to say we've done the entirety of the Intracoastal Waterway, a claim few boaters can make.


Transiting the Almonaster bridge, for, we hope, the last time.

Most of our readers are aware that hurricane season officially started on June 1, and runs through November 30. The busiest part of the season comprises September and October. Knowing that dangerous gulf cyclones are rare in June and even July, we made a calculated decision to remain in the gulf through June, to cruise Texas. We extended our stay by a couple of weeks to return to New Orleans for warranty repairs.


This sternwheeler is being refurbished just across from the boatyard; we saw it arrive back in March.

Odds are just that, odds, of course, and as it turns out we already have a probable gulf storm. Right now it is Investigation Area 93L, with an 80% chance of becoming a tropical cyclone. It's way too early to predict landfall, but the model runs vary from Port Aransas, TX, all the way to Appalachicola, FL, and everything in between. In other words, right where we are.



You don't outrun a tropical storm in a seven-knot boat, and so now we are in the process of developing a panoply of contingency plans in the event the storm catches up with us as a Tropical Storm or, less likely, a Category 1 Hurricane. Unlike the east coast, options for hurricane holes carrying a six foot draft on the gulf coast are very limited.


Maybe our new lucky dice will protect us. Thanks, Elvis!

We'll have a much better idea in the morning, when the model runs will provide slightly better landfall predictions. Depending on speed and direction, we may have to make an all-out run for Mobile, where we can escape up the Mobile River as far as necessary. Alternatively we can seek shelter up the Biloxi River or at one of the numerous marinas in the Biloxi area.


Angel loves Amazon deliveries. We got several during our week in the yard.

Tonight we should be anchored behind Half Moon Island, at the mouth of Lake Borgne. In the morning we will know whether our next stop is Bay St. Louis, Gulfport, or Biloxi.

Update: We are anchored off Half Moon Island, at the very eastern edge of Louisiana (map). A thunderstorm is moving in (we rode one out at the dock last night, too) and we are hunkering down.

Back at the Boatyard

We are again docked at Seabrook Marine in New Orleans, Louisiana (map). After a quick stop at the fuel dock to pump out, the yard had us proceed directly to the work dock. Everything here is so familiar, and we've already been back to three of our favorite local joints.


Vector at the work dock at Seabrook Marine. The handrails are already off.

Not long after my last post here, we arrived at the small waterside community of Jean Lafitte, LA (yes, that Jean Lafitte). Here the ICW intersects with the Barataria Waterway, which leads to a minor gulf outlet through Barataria Bay, and Bayou Villars, connecting Lake Salvador. This is all very close to New Orleans, and is the epicenter of popular "swamp tours." We passed no fewer than four giant airboats with perhaps a dozen tourists apiece, as well as a large pontoon boat. Judging from the cameras aimed at us, we were just part of the tour.


One of numerous airboat tours. The boats are very loud.

Shortly thereafter we passed through the floodwall (and yes, our compass went crazy again) and approached the Boomtown Casino. We were disappointed to find our primo spot from last visit occupied by a small cruising sailboat, and the other two possible spots along the wall taken up by towboats. We might well have rafted to a towboat if we could speak with them, but no one was manning the radio watch.

Instead we proceeded past the casino to a small basin marked as a good anchorage on our chart.  It would have been great, except that a large offshore equipment company recently took over the property and is using the basin to load and store deck barges, so we had to squeeze in with three barges and a towboat. The towboat was unoccupied.


Our tight anchorage. Vector and the tugboat are shown to scale, but the tug's orientation is wrong -- it's actually pointed to the bank to the right, butted up against a barge that does not show on this plot.

It made for tight quarters but we had few other options. We put out just 30' of rode and swung in a tight circle that had the skeg swinging through the mud on the shoreward side, and brought us close to the towboat in the other direction. Still, it was quite secure, and we splashed the tender to go to the casino for dinner.

We landed the tender right next to the aforementioned sailboat, and enjoyed meeting Jana and Tom aboard Adagio Gul. They, too, are eastbound on the ICW, having started in Texas just next door to where we stayed in Kemah. We chatted briefly about the logistics of the Mississippi, and the fact that they were stuck at Boomtown for a bit due to a problem with the Lapalco bridge, which we can fit under without an opening.


Numerous shipyards along the canal, beyond the Lapalco bridge in the foreground.

We walked into the casino for dinner and were disappointed to discover that the nicer restaurant was closed on Sundays. That left either the buffet or an Asian-themed casual restaurant, and we chose the latter. The place was incredibly popular, including doing a brisk take-out business, making us wonder if it was not, perhaps, the best Asian food in Harvey.


Two big river towboats in drydock for repairs.

We decked the tender when we returned to the boat, and had a comfortable night. Monday morning we woke of natural causes, but still got a fairly early start for the short trip north to the Harvey Lock. The canal here is lined with all manner of shipyards, many doing work on the enormous Mississippi River towboats. I was amused to pass a small paddlewheeler and a larger faux-riverboat barge that I recognized as having been part of a tour operation in Memphis when we were there. Apparently they were brought downriver for repairs.


We saw these "riverboats" in Memphis. The faux one is drydocked.

We arrived at the Harvey Lock behind two lightboat towboats just as they were starting to downlock traffic coming from the river. The two towboats had grabbed the last good spots on the wall and I had to stationkeep for 45 minutes or so; just as we were all ready to enter the chamber a Hatteras sportfish also pulled up.


Waiting behind the Dorothy Ann for a boat to exit the lock through the open bascule bridges.

By the time we and the two towboats got settled in on the downstream wall, where the lockmasters could pass us lines, all the good spots were taken, and the Hatteras had to settle for pins on the upriver wall. That proved a challenge for them as the lock began to fill, and they ended up smashing their pulpit against the lock wall twice, pretty hard. I radioed for them to proceed out of the lock ahead of us, just before I called Vessel Traffic to clear us onto the river.


The Hatt getting sideways during lockage. Guy on the foredeck is desperately trying to work the line.

The Mississippi is running at a good flood right now, at +14' gage. That's how far the lock had to lift us, but it also means the river is very swift. I powered out of the lock forebay at full speed, angling a bit upriver into the current. After turning downriver we averaged about four knots behind us, although we actually had a countercurrent eddy against us at Algiers Point, where I had to move to the inside of the bend to make way for an upbound freighter.


Water pours in from the river-side gates. We're going up 14'.

The turn into the industrial canal forebay was a matter of turning the boat sideways upriver of the entrance, waiting until we were nearly abreast, then powering forward. We made it without having to push back upriver at all. Once in the forebay we cleared out of Vessel Traffic and called the lock, and they asked us to tie to the small waiting dock. That dock, however, was full, occupied by an oyster boat and our old friend the Hatteras. They told us we'd need to raft. The Hatt was a bit too short and dainty for comfort, so we ended up rafting to the oyster boat.

We had about an hour wait for the lock. One of the towboats with us at Harvey also showed up, and when the lock cleared us in we were first in line with the towboat behind us. The lock asked the oyster boat to tie off to the towboat, and asked the Hatt to tie off to us. After watching him smash into the lock walls at Harvey, we implored the lock personnel who were handing us lines to leave us and tie the Hatt up elsewhere on the wall -- no way could we tend lines on both sides of the boat. After Louise told them the pulpit-smashing story they agreed, much to our relief.


Passing Carnival Triumph at her home dock near Riverwalk. Her lifeboats are lowered for a drill.

Somewhere in all of this the thruster switch on the flybridge quit, and we spent ten minutes drifting in the turning basin at the ICW junction while I quickly replaced it with a generic SPDT switch I had lying around. I did not want to have to dock without thrusters or from the pilothouse. We then proceeded through the Almonaster bridge, which opened this time on first call, and on to the fuel dock at Seabrook for a pumpout.

I know some of you are here for the schadenfreude, and I don't want to disappoint, so let me say right here the pumpout was both necessary and dreaded. That's because after our last offshore passage we were smelling a faint sewage smell near the bilge, and upon inspection we discovered the forward tank was full, even though the aft tank was mostly empty, having just pumped out in Corpus Christi.


Downtown from the river. Hilton at left, Jax at far right, abandoned World Trade Center in the middle.

This really should not be able to happen, as the two tanks are connected together at the bottom with a pipe. The idea is that they act as a single tank of larger capacity. When we pump out, we draw from the slightly lower aft tank and the forward tank drains into it by gravity. For the two tanks to have different levels, there has to be a blockage, either in the connecting pipe, or, less likely, the vent.

Our heads are the macerating type. So no large solids can enter the tanks, leaving me scratching my head about blockage. Once we arrived at the pumpout, I removed the inspection plug on the forward tank before starting the pump, just to be sure it was not a vent problem. When the aft tank was empty with no change in level forward, we tried to remove the blockage by covering the vent line. All that succeeding in doing was to suck all the water out of the master head.


Approaching the Almonaster Bridge. Disappointed to see "Folgers" now painted on what was the Luzianne coffee plant.

I'm sure you can guess what happens next here. The blockage needs to be removed mechanically by rodding it out, and the only way to do that is to stick my arm through the 3" access port on the top of the (now empty) lower tank and run a snake through the connection, which actually comprises three barbs, two 90 elbows, and two sections of 1.5" sanitation hose. This really needed to be done before we started putting any more effluent in the tank, and so I tackled it first thing Tuesday morning.

That did the trick and the tanks have now equalized. This particular maintenance task was performed au naturel, of course, in order to make a straight egress directly to the shower upon completion. We concluded that the blockage was actually a buildup of uratic salts, a common problem in systems that use very little fresh water for flushing. We'll have to use acid to try to dissolve the salts after the next pumpout; we're going to start by trying several gallons of white vinegar before resorting to hydrochloric acid, a known solution that will be hard on the metal ball valve leading to the macerator.


Bedding failure at new latch installation.

Also first thing Tuesday morning, the crew from the yard got started on our issues. We're back here principally because we already have rust all over the boat, in spite of not even two months since a full paint job. A good deal of that rust is emanating from hardware mounted to the steel, indicating improper prep and bedding, and by the end of Tuesday the crew had already removed most of the stainless handrails around the boat.


Paint/primer void that led to cracking.

Various latches and other hardware also need to be removed and rebedded, and some areas where there are simply voids in the paint need to be treated and repainted. Some overspray and other items also need to be addressed, and as long as we're here, we'll have the yard touch up the various dings we've already put in the new paint job ourselves, such as the chain rash we got in the Calcasieu.


Another prep failure. Overmaskng led to lack of primer.

Tuesday evening our new friends aboard Adagio Gul arrived here at the marina; they were planning on just a couple of nights but they decided to get hauled out for bottom paint so they'll be with us a few more days. We all just squeaked through the Harvey Canal; yesterday a crane barge hit an overhead power line, closing the canal for a full day and disrupting power to 10,000 customers.

The yard is estimating completion by the middle of next week. We figure that really means Friday. Our good friend and former master of this vessel, John, once told me that everything in a boatyard gets finished Friday afternoon, and if it doesn't, then it will be finished by the following Friday.

Once we are done here we will be making a beeline for Tampa Bay. It's two full days down the Mississippi to reach the last anchorage before the gulf, and from there its about 365 nautical miles to the first anchorage at Pass-a-Grille, or a crossing of two and one half days. We'll cross our fingers for a window that long, but, if need be, we can break it up into two or more hops and some additional mileage.

Closing the Texas loop

We are under way eastbound in the ICW, somewhere between LaRose and New Orleans, Louisiana. This morning found us anchored in a familiar place, Bayou Black just off the ICW west of Morgan City (map). After arriving back at the ICW just west of there, we effectively "closed the loop" on our grand tour of the Texas gulf coast.

Wrapping up the report on our last passage, shortly after I posted my last entry here, I got very busy. The shrimp fleet I mentioned seeing ahead of me was effectively in my way, and I ended up having to dodge at least two boats, including one where I had to make a right-angle turn off the route, steam past his nets, and another right angle to get back. I don't trust the shrimpers to see anything -- they have so many lights all over the boats that their night vision is useless.

Seas also got considerably rougher, and I had to reduce throttle even though we were making poor headway. Eventually they calmed down a little and we kept it at 1500 through Louise's watch. I went to bed at 3am, and no sooner had I gotten in the sack than the forward bilge alarm sounded. We were pretty sure there wasn't more than a cup of water in there, so we decided to deal with it later and I went back to bed.

A quick side note here that there is an automatic pump in this bilge, but because the bilge is very pointy up at the bow, the pickup is a good eight inches or so above the pointy bottom, and it's possible to have as much as a couple of gallons in there before the pump kicks in. The alarm is down at the very bottom of the point. With enough pitching, seawater actually can come back in the bilge discharge some 4' or so above the waterline, and make its way into the bilge through the pump, usually one tablespoon at a time.

The rest of the crossing was uneventful, and when I came back on watch at 8am we had regained some lost ground and were just a few minutes from the turn at the bar channel. We ended up convoying upriver with the FMS Courage, an offshore service boat, and the Miss Niz, an ocean tug running lightboat.

That proved handy later. After the long straight slog down the bar channel we were in the Atchafalaya, with a steadily increasing amount of current against us. I was driving upriver tactics -- staying inside the bends and close to shore -- when we came across a number of additional buoys down the middle of the channel. Courage was in the lead and took the inside line, counter to what the buoys would suggest. Miss Niz took the outside line.


The mighty Atchafalaya, running high with water diverted from the Mississippi at the Old River Structure.

I plotted Courage's track and we decided to follow this 11'-draft boat. Miss Niz touched bottom in a couple of spots with her 10' draft. We learned from Courage that the buoys were dropped to mark a ridge. It was great to have some local knowledge along for the trip with us.

By the time we reached the Avoca Island cutoff to Bayou Chene, our speed had dropped to 3.8 knots. As much as we would have liked to make the docks in Berwick, that was going to be a looong trip. We had been concerned about the navigability of Bayou Chene, but when both Courage and Miss Niz took the cutoff, we knew we would be fine.

I had radioed ahead to Courage to ask about the current in the cutoff, and he reported he had over a knot behind him. I hadn't really thought about it, but the cutoff connects the Atchafalaya, which was at a +6' flood stage, to Bayou Black which is protected behind a lock. The cutoff bypasses the lock, and so of course the current would run from the flooding river into the ICW. We went from 3.8 knots to 8.3 knots in the span of a few hundred feet.

That had us in the anchorage by 3pm, in plenty of time to relax before afternoon cocktails. We enjoyed a nice dinner and then crashed very early; I was uncharacteristically in bed around 10pm. Just as well, because we needed to get an early start this morning.


The view from our anchorage. This dredge pipe has been stored here so long, vegetation has taken root on top of it.

The stats for the passage worked out to 149 nautical miles in 27.5 hours, for a dismal speed made good of just 5.42 knots. Still, it was less time and fuel than it would have been to continue on the inside route, and it gets us to the yard two full days sooner.

Speaking of stats, I ran the numbers for our big "loop" trip through Texas and southwest Louisiana. I chose Morgan City, where we fueled up, as a start and this morning's anchorage as the end, as they are just ten miles apart and it let me make a better estimate of fuel.

• Number of calendar days: 45
• Distance traveled: 1,108 nautical miles
• Main engine hours: 190.4
• Generator hours: 22.2
• Average speed: 5.82 knots
• Fuel consumed: 660 gallons (approximate)

Today we figured on a longish 11-hour day, remembering we found no place to stop between this morning's anchorage and Boomtown Casino. But with the water level up perhaps 6-10" from our earlier pass, and less wind, we decided to try to squeeze in to the Houma city marina one more time.

This time I was able to get in from the ICW past the permanently moored sport fish, and the dock ahead of him was empty. But there was no way to come alongside the dock, in fact I could not really even move off center channel. Backing out into the ICW with both wind and current trying to push me into the sportfish took all the boat handling skills I possess, along with some well-placed fenders by the boatswain's department.

So we will again be tying up at the Boomtown Casino this evening. The display says we should arrive right around 6pm, and knowing how fiddly it is, we'll probably take right up to dinner time getting tied up. We're looking forward to stepping off the boat for the first time in almost a week, and we'll walk into the casino for cocktails and dinner.

Tomorrow we'll cross the Mississippi and should be back at Seabrook Marine by day's end. We have two locks and several bridges to transit, and the river itself should be a bit challenging in its current flood stage. I expect my next post here will be sometime after we are squared away at Seabrook.

Cajun coast

I am again typing under way, and we are once again in the Gulf of Mexico, en route to the Atchafalaya River. Right now we are somewhere south of Grand Chenier, LA, more or less the heart of Acadiana. From here we can look over with binoculars and see the same landmarks we drove past in Odyssey.


Sunset over our anchorage in Cameron, LA.

Today we have plenty of company, with a number of shrimpers trawling for the famous gulf shrimp, and myriad offshore service vessels that look like crew boats on steroids, carrying materials to and from the hundreds of offshore platforms out here. One of the service boats called us on the radio to compliment Vector and say that they did not see many pass through here.


Ships anchored off Houston/Galveston inlet.

Shortly after I last posted here Wednesday evening, we had our dinner, and then prepared to approach the busy Houston/Galveston anchorages and shipping lanes. Louise said her goodnight and retired below just as I had to cross the shipping lanes, which required coordinating with two inbound ships whom we passed between.


Display showing anchored ships, under way ships, and little ol' Vector making her way through.

Sunset happened while we were still in the northeastern portion of the anchorage. The anchorage is 14 nautical miles across, and divided by the two-way shipping lanes, so it took us over two hours to cross the entire distance.


And what it looks like on radar.

Things got much quieter after dark, and we saw very little traffic after leaving the anchorage in our wake. Our route took us past numerous offshore platforms, but these are mostly well charted and I had made sure our route came no closer than a thousand feet to any of them.


Sunset over the anchorage as we steam past.

Adding the extra mile or so that it took to keep the route within a dozen miles of the coast meant we had Internet coverage for most of the trip. That goes a long way toward keeping the tedium down on an overnight passage. In addition to getting the blog uploaded, I was able to do more research and route planning for our arrival as well as the following couple of days.

Sometime after midnight the Coast Guard announced that the Calcasieu River channel was closed due to an adrift spud. I called them back on the radio to get more detail; apparently the river was still open to traffic drawing less than 15', but would be closed during the recovery operation. The position of the spud was a ways upriver from our planned anchorage, so I decided to stay the course, rather than divert to our bail-out option at the Sabine Pass.

We had a favorable current for most of the trip. So much so that I reduced engine RPM from our normal cruise of 1500 rpm down to 1400 rpm to avoid arriving at the inlet while I was still off watch. While Louise could certainly conn Vector through the inlet and up the river, we generally prefer for both of us to be in the pilothouse during these kinds of evolutions.

As it turns out, I was up by around 8:30 or so anyway, in plenty of time to enjoy my coffee and even check the news and email before having to pilot into the river. The transition was uneventful and we had a nice trip upriver. Just past Monkey Island, formed when the ship channel straightened out the course of the river here, we crossed paths with the Cameron Ferry.

Long-time readers may recall we very nearly got stuck on this ferry in Odyssey when we hung up on the transition ramp and dropped an air bag. Our next couple of crossings were uneventful and we even spent the night once in the ferry landing on the Holly Beach side. Since then, the parish has opened a nice new campground just north of the east jetty; we could see it from Vector.


View upriver. Stationary shrimping rigs on left, shrimp boats on right. No idea what the weird round building is.

After passing the ferry landing we turned off into the old river channel, now called the east fork, which leads to Calcasieu Lake. After passing the commercial quays full of offshore service vessels, we dropped the hook across from the shrimp boat dock (map). Upriver from us we could see a number of floats with trawl nets attached; apparently the current is enough in this river to "trawl" for shrimp from a stationary platform. We passed a couple downriver, too, and I was able to get a better photo.


A pair of shrimping floats at the mouth of the old river.

That same current made for some difficulty anchoring. Maneuvering the boat in a couple of knots while trying simultaneously to position the anchor an avoid running aground is challenging enough. But it would seem also that our chain snagged on something soon after droppiagainng, and we pulled up tight on it, giving Vector her first "chain rash" since being painted. One downside of choosing a hull color other than white is that the fine lines of the chain damage are through the color and show as white.

We were dog tired so we called it  good enough, but the snag made for a weird swing circle overnight. This morning we had to dance around to get unstuck. After I made my closing log entry I compiled the stats for the trip:

• Distance traveled, anchor up to anchor down: 315 nautical miles.
• Elapsed time: 51 hours and 50 minutes
• Average speed: 6.08 knots
• I generally do not record fuel consumption, but it was in the neighborhood of 150 gallons.

After getting settled in and catching up on sleep, we discussed the plan for the next few days. We'd like to get back to Seabrook Marine in New Orleans as quickly as possible, to get some issues addressed and then be on our way out of the gulf before hurricane season, which started yesterday, ramps up into full swing.


Our view downriver. Workboat docks with offshore support vessels in the background; the pair of shrimpers trawled back and forth right here for hours.

Since favorable weather was still forecast for this part of the gulf, we had the opportunity to go right back outside and try to make the furthest east inlet this side of the Mississippi, the Atchafalaya. That makes an overnight trip of what would take us three nights on the inside route. We briefly considered starting right back out yesterday afternoon, but decided we could all use the rest, particularly the cat, who was loathe to move under way even to eat, drink, or use the litter box.

After running all the numbers and figuring that same 6-knot average speed in the gulf, we determined a 2pm departure this afternoon would be ideal, getting us to the Atchafalaya to catch a fair tide upriver. We both had a good night's sleep, trying to stick to watch-schedule bed times.

This morning while I was doing some additional research and prep, we learned the Atchafalaya is at flood stage at Morgan City. The newly renovated city docks, which just opened since we were through there in April, are again unusable because they are a foot under water. The Berwick docks across the way are just barely usable.

It's almost impossible to translate river gages (sic) to current in knots, but Louise found a site that suggested the 300,000 cfs flowing through Morgan City right now translates to 2.75 knots. It won't be that bad downstream because the river fans out into a delta, but, still, we had to figure on some serious current.

That had the potential to take our six-hour upriver cruise to well over ten hours, and we quickly recalculated our departure time to arrive at the bar at dawn, just as the flood was starting. That gave us a noon start, and we weighed anchor at 11:30. Unfortunately, what was a favorable current running past Galveston has today turned against us, and I've had to increase to 1600 rpm even to get 5 knots. Our planned 0630 arrival at the bar is now showing as 1000 instead. We should have left at 10am when we did the math -- slowing down is always easier than speeding up.

We also would not have taken the extra fifteen minutes this morning to do the "Cameron Loop" around Monkey Island, which brought us past the bulk of the town of Cameron, which is still struggling some dozen years after Rita. I gave a brief post-Rita rundown of the parish as we passed through after our stint in south Louisiana with the Red Cross.


Cameron courthouse and water tower center frame. We also saw a Family Dollar, which is a big step up here.

I did snap a photo of the courthouse and the water tower, two of the very few things still standing and working after the storm. We would have come ashore here during our stay, had there been any way to do so. Cameron Parish has a special place in our hearts.

No sooner had we cleared the Calcasieu jetties than I spotted a funnel cloud in the distance. Fortunately it was moving to the right and we were making a left. We figured it to be about three miles out, on the leading edge of a storm we could see on our radar. Nothing to trifle with in a slow-moving boat; we've altered course for these before.


"Water spout" funnel cloud, just right of center, with the storm to the left. Click to enlarge.

Cameron itself is all about oilfield service. The river and loop are lined with offshore support vessels, lift boats, jack rigs, and all manner of offshore infrastructure. Likewise, the area of the gulf immediately outside the inlet and its attendant anchorage sees a lot of "parked" drilling rigs and other idle platforms, awaiting their next assignments.


Idle jack-up rigs "parked" in the gulf.

While we did not pass any operating drill rigs, we did pass a number of in-service production platforms, being tended to by the aforementioned flotilla of offshore service vessels. As I am finishing typing (these posts take me several hours, in between other tasks) it is nighttime and I can see the lights of more platforms all around me. A shrimping fleet is also out in force, the boats ahead of me likely working out of Freshwater Bayou.

With any luck, we will still make the Atchafalaya Bar by 0900 or so, still on a good flood, and have little trouble making it upriver. Instead of pushing up the main channel all the way to Berwick, we might take the Avoca Island cut, getting out of the main current and cutting a few miles off the eastbound ICW. That would land us in the Black's Bayou anchorage that we used on the way west.

Texas!

We are anchored in an oxbow of the Sabine River, just on the Texas side of the Texas/Louisiana line (map). We had a mostly pleasant five nights in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Actually, the last four nights were entirely pleasant; it was the first night that was... interesting.


Vector docked at L'Auberge du Lac resort and casino in Lake Charles.

Saturday we had a lovely cruise from our nice anchorage on the Mermantau to the Calcasieu River. The ICW arrives at the river by way of Black Bayou, and shortly before reaching the port of Lake Charles we passed through the Black Bayou pontoon bridge and the Calcasieu Lock.


Calcasieu Lock, another "float in the middle" exercise.

The former looks a lot like a barge with a roadway on it. To allow vessels to pass, small ramps at either end lift out of the way and the "barge" is swung out of the channel and parallel to it by cables. Sometimes the cables go right across the channel, and you need to hold short of the bridge until the tender has dropped the cables all the way to the bottom.

We had no wait at either the bridge or the lock, and in short order we were steaming thorough the port. Lake Charles is a big industrial port with a deepwater channel directly to the gulf. We plotted the big ships on our AIS display before turning into the river itself and heading upriver to the city.


When the cattle are strolling in the ICW you know the water is too shallow in that part.

Our chart showed two anchorages en route to the casino dock that was our ultimate destination. One in an oxbow of the river, cut off when the ship channel was cut through, and another up the old river channel that leads to Prien Lake, also now cut off by the ship channel. This latter anchorage is just past a deepwater turning basin and showed 12' depths, perfect for us. Also, we had a favorable tide and wanted to get as far upriver as possible.

We turned in at the turning basin and continued up the old channel. Our charts showed 12'-15', but the sounder kept dropping, and when it registered 8', we backed out to the 10' contour and dropped anchor (map). It was fine, well off the ship channel, and we had cocktails and dinner and later in the evening Louise went to bed.


We did have a few large wakes at the dock. Catered party at left was casino employee appreciation; Vector is in a lot of photos.

Sometime around 1:30am I was annoyed to find a spotlight shining in the salon window as I worked at my computer. Now, we get spotlights like this from time to time, particularly when  a towboat is trying to navigate past us, so I though nothing of it except it was not going away. I went to the pilothouse to see what was going on, and I turned the radio back on that we keep tuned to channel 13, the bridge-to-bridge communication channel. We always keep a radio on channel 16, the hailing and distress channel, even when anchored.


Sunset over the Calcasieu. Vector and Louise in silhouette.

As soon as I turned on 13 I could hear someone talking about us, and I hailed the towboat who had us lit up. He informed me that a ship was trying to reach us (but not, clearly, on 16... pilot training is not what it used to be). After a quick exchange I ended up speaking with Pilot 8, aboard the Cape Bonny, a 900'-long motor tanker. We had passed them in their berth earlier in the day.


The rabbits (lots of them) heard the casino had an all-you-can-eat buffet. They were working their way through the decorative plantings here at a prodigious rate.

She informed me that her intention was to bring the ship around the point and into the natural channel of the river, with it's bow just a few dozen yards from where we were anchored. I had to confirm this with her several times, because the Cape Bonny's forward draft was a full 18' and our sounder had registered just 12' where she intended to put the bow.

Reluctantly, I agreed to move upriver a short distance, and Louise got dressed and came up from belowdecks. We weighed anchor and moved to a spot some 500' further in to the river, clenching the whole time with the depth alarm sounding. We dropped the hook and waited for the Cape Bonny to arrive.


The 900' Cape Bonny (with bunker tug alongside) in the natural river,showing our three anchored spots.

After she rounded the point, assisted by a pair of tractor tugs, the pilot again called to say we were going to disappear from her sight line below her bow and we still looked too close. So we again weighed anchor -- by this time it is 2am -- and moved another 400' upriver (map). Our chart plot from the next morning tells the tale -- you can see the Cape Bonny, a tug pushing the bunkering barge next to her, our anchored position, and the two previous spots we had anchored.



The view we woke to. Cape Bonny just downriver with a bunker barge alongside.

In truth, and as I suspected, we never had to move at all. Although, honestly, our first spot would have been a nerve-wracking distance from the big tanker's bow. Our second spot was perfectly fine and we certainly did not need to move a second time. However we did not run aground and we did end up having a very comfortable night, once all the drama was over.

Steaming head-on towards an anchored Cape Bonny. We need to thread the narrow gap between the ship and the little point of land off her starboard bow.

In the morning we determined that the bow of the Cape Bonny was, indeed, resting in a place where our sounder had registered just 10'-12'. So in fact the bottom there is either mud so soft that a ship can simply push it aside, or else it's a "false bottom" reading, where a layer of silt-laded water of different density reads as solid to the sounder.


Passing the Cape Bonny close aboard -- she fills the pilothouse window.

We had been told the ship would like there for eight hours to bunker. But when we called them at 10am the watchstander told us their plan was to weigh anchor at 2200. We were not going to wait around that long to get under way, so that presented the problem of how to get around this behemoth without running aground.


Close, but we made it without trading paint or running aground.

We ended up squeaking by just 30' off her starboard bow (her starboard anchor was down) with the depth alarm squawking the whole time. It registered just under two feet under our keel. Once we were past the skinny bit we had an easy cruise all the way to L'Auberge du Lac casino (map), where we had reservations to dock for two nights.


Approaching our destination. L'Auberge on the left and Golden Nugget on the right.

I might mention here that we anchored Saturday night instead of proceeding the last half hour to the casino for two reasons. First among them is that the rate for Saturday night was $100 whereas Sunday through Thursday nights the rate is just $50. The second being that arriving in the morning rather than the evening means another half day's access to all the resort amenities.


I got to see Vector again every time I went into the building.

After we were tied up, in the only spot our draft would permit, I walked to the front desk to get registered. We also went to the casino promotions desk and signed up for club cards, which got us 5% at all the restaurants and two $20 coupons for massages in the spa, which we had already planned on booking.


The carrot cake at Saltgrass Steakhouse at the Nugget was enormous. We each ate a quarter of it, and had the other half a different night.

We very much enjoyed our stay at the resort. In addition to spa visits we enjoyed several of the on-property restaurants as well as one at the adjoining Golden Nugget resort, which is something of a carbon-copy of the one we've patronized in Atlantic City, complete with a plethora of Landrys-branded restaurants. We spent time at the pool, which also features a lazy river; sadly it was not nearly warm enough weather to really enjoy it.

The adult pool, complete with cocktail service.

We were having a good enough time that we extended our stay by one night, to yesterday morning. When I checked out the desk said we could spend more time during the day so long as we unplugged, and we could use the pool facilities if we got our wristbands before 11am. We ended up staying to mid-afternoon and I enjoyed some more time at the pools.


I-10 bridge over the Calcasieu in Lake Charles.

We knew that would mean not enough day to make it to the next reasonable anchorage along the ICW, so instead we just went a little downriver to anchor at the old oxbow (map). With an easy schedule we first took a little cruise upriver to the eponymous lake and the city of Lake Charles itself. A shallow bar between the ship channel and the rest of the lake precludes Vector from getting into the lake or close to downtown, but I snapped photos of the I-10 bridge we've traversed so many times, and the civic center where we spent so much time with the Red Cross after hurricane Rita.

City of Lake Charles. Civic Center is center frame. This is as close as Vector can get.

The oxbow proved a much better choice than our selection Saturday night, and we had a pleasant and undisturbed night. This in spite of having to anchor in winds of 20 knots gusting to 30 or so. That same wind made it a challenge to get off the dock and made for a bit of an interesting river cruise. Sometime overnight it died down considerably and clocked around to the other direction, and we woke up much closer to shore in only 8' of water.


Sunset at the oxbow. What a view!

Today's cruise brought us down the Calcasieu River and back to the ICW, where the first few miles west of the river are just an unending conga line of towboats and barges. In short order, though, it again became just "the ditch" and I was able to engage the autopilot and type some of this post.


Sunset over Shell Island in the Sabine River. Howdy from Texas.

We pulled off here in one of the easiest and most comfortable anchorages on this entire section of coastline. Deep, wide, and out of the barge traffic. Tomorrow we will continue a short distance to Port Arthur, where we will find the last decent anchorage until Galveston Bay. That will leave us with a rather long 60-mile day on Saturday to reach a safe stopping place.