Day 13: Land Ho

Galveston, Texas.

4/29/2010, Thursday, Day 13 - The Final Chapter

Here I am sitting comfortably in front of my own laptop (with a real mouse) and trying to recount the last day of our adventure. The room is perfectly still and the only things that move are the tree branches outside my office window caught under a light afternoon spring breeze.

Here’s what we encountered, on the last day of our 1600 nm non-stop trip, after entering Galveston Bay on 4/29/2010 at 0000.

From past experiences, we knew every time when making landfall at night at a strange harbor was going to be a challenge, but after studying the charts available to us on SeaClear, we knew right away this was going to be a navigator’s nightmare. The area we entered was about 125 square nm littered with hundreds of active and abandoned oil wells, derricks, drilling platforms, obstructions, sunken shipwrecks and a maze of shipping channels to accommodate the large influx of oil tanker traffic. Terry spent a good day worth of time painfully checking and double checking every waypoint and entering them onto our onboard GPS and making a route of 15 waypoints, feeding them to Auto, to be followed without deviation, for we are about to make our last track of 100 nm at night under a full bright moon.

The South Channel we entered was about 65 nm long and 1-1/2 nm wide but without any Aids to Navigation (ATON), i.e. no lights or buoys of any kind. At the end of the 65 nm run in the South Channel there was an intersection where other shipping channels (east, west and north) converge. Standing in the middle of this intersection, was one important channel marker, known to all mariners as a safe water mark or mid channel mark. You’ll find a safe water mark outside any port before entering, e.g. San Francisco (SF), Santa Cruz (SC), Half Moon Bay (PP)…etc.

This one is designated on the chart as – RW “GA” Mo(A). Stands for - Red/White, Galveston, Morse Code Alpha. All safe water marks have this same distinct feature, a white light that emits a Morse code “A “signal, i.e. dit and dah. (One short and one long,) Normally when sailing at night you can see this distinct signal 2 to 3 nm away as it usually stands alone in complete darkness. But this was absolutely not the case in Galveston Bay. The whole area where we sailed within this straight track was full of light with various colors and intensity in the fore and back ground emanating from all the structures I mentioned earlier. Finding RW “GA” Mo(A) was like threading the eye of a needle in a haystack.

We were both up all night, Terry was down below at the Navigation Station watching the radar, sailing instruments, GPS track, while I sat behind the helm (in shivering cold) keeping a sharp look-out and confirming visually anything he saw on radar. We had to dodge many ships in the beginning of the channel and then traffic got lighter into the night and I was able to take an hour nap to warm up. I got up at 0300 and Terry was at the companionway looking at this bright white light ¼ nm off our starboard bow with great concern. I tried to wake up and train my night vision onto that bright light and said it didn’t seem to move and maybe it was an abandoned oil well. Terry didn’t agree as he had tracked this light on radar the last half an hour and detected a very slow movement. He instinctively took the helm and gunned the engine and changed course 30 degrees to port and passed it to our starboard while giving it plenty of sea room. As we were passing this bright light, we were able to see it was a small boat with two outriggers, one on each side, moving ever so slowly on the water. It was a shrimper, those famous gulf shrimp boats made famous by the movie Forrest Gump. I was half expecting to see Bubba, Forrest and Lieutenant Dan on board when we passed its bow.

The rest of the trip up the channel was pretty uneventful until we got close to the safe water mark at the intersection. As we got to about 1 nm to RW”GA” Mo(A), I kept scanning the horizon to confirm the mark from the GPS (with my newly cleaned glasses). I have better vision than Terry and usually was able to find marks quite fast, but for the life of me, this time I couldn’t find it. It was getting closer and closer and all I could see were a bunch of white lights and yellow lights in the background and some off both port and starboard in the distance. We desperately needed to confirm and find this light as the chart might be wrong and we’ll make a major error by turning into the wrong channel in the dark. We had only this light to go by in the entire 65 nm track and I couldn’t find it. I started to curse myself for this inability. Terry even came out of his warm and snug “Crystal Palace” and helped me look. He then decided we needed to make our course change to 330 M to make the entrance to Galveston some 20 nm away. After the course change, he piped up, “How about that light at 11 o’clock?” And I looked in that direction and sure enough out there stood this elusive light blinking at me with a short and a long flash. It had been playing hide and seek with me the last 20 minutes. I was very pleased and was almost going to suggest to Terry to get close enough to RW “GA”, stop the boat so I could kiss its light bulb. So, the Great Captain had saved the day once again. We had since decided the chart from SeaClear was wrong and the coordinates for the light were off by ½ nm and therefore I was looking in the wrong direction. Yes, when all else fails, blame it on the chart!

Dawn had finally arrived, and the rest of the 12 nm to Galveston was much easier to navigate as we found all our marks despite many tankers passing us. We were sailing among the big boys, life blood to our economy, and I was once again busy with my Nikon to witness such a rare sight.

Upon arriving in Galveston at 0730 was this yacht basin where we were supposed to check in with the US Coast Guard, guardian to our sea coast and savior to all mariners. The proper protocol was to hail them on Channel 16 or 22A (Coast Guard’s own working channel) with our VHF Radio. Terry had tried for 30 minutes but got no acknowledgement from them. We finally called one of the marinas, a number I found while doing some research on the area when I was still in Sacramento, and got from them the number of the Galveston Coast Guard on a land line. (So much for our Sea Coast Guardian monitoring VHF radio for Mayday distress calls on Channel 16.) After making numerous phone calls to the Coast Guard in Galveston, to a phone call to US Customs and Border Protection in Florida and back to Galveston, a typical bureaucratic run around, we were finally told to pull up to the fuel dock at the yacht basin for official clearance with US Customs and Border Protection under the newly established Department of Homeland Security.

An hour later, after fighting a strong current that set us down the coast for 3 nm while finding out where to check in, we were making our first docking after 12 days. As we made our approach to the fuel dock, there stood two uniform officers in blue waiting for us. I stepped off with the bow line in hand while Terry expertly maneuvered the boat to a halt and grabbed the stern line and came off and we both secured Living Water to the rather large wooden bollards on the dock.

I turned and saw the two officers, a tall, slim African American female with a serious look, Officer Johnson and the other round faced, well-built white male with a smiley grin, Officer Pyle (I did not make this up). I put on the best Texan accent I could muster after this long night ordeal and said, “Hi, y’all. What a fine mornin’!” The two officers turned and looked at each other and probably had no clue as to what I had just said. After a few moments of awkwardness, once again the Good Captain came to the rescue and proceeded to go through the paperwork with Officer Johnson. Meanwhile, I was attempting to make small talk with Officer Pyle and found out he was actually from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (No wonder he couldn’t understand my Texan accent). I switched my accent ever so slightly to a more southern tone. “How yo like’em shrimp boats?” I said, from which I drew another puzzled look from the gentleman. Tired of the small talk, Officer Pyle, not to be out done by the other Officer who was checking our ship’s documentation, asked if we had brought in any meat or vegetables, to which Terry had truthfully answered to the best of his knowledge that we had some frozen meat and two apples. After further questioning, Officer Pyle decided we needed to surrender the apples so I headed back to Living Water and retrieved the contraband. While going through the refrigerator in the galley, I also discovered we still had two oranges, two red onions, a cucumber, a mango and a lime. I wasn’t about to contradict my dear Captain and kept that to myself. After stepping onto the dock, I put on this pathetic and sad look and reluctantly handed the two wrinkling apples to Officer Pyle.”We were going to have them for breakfast.” I said, trying to hold back tears. My acting skill was still in fine form, never mind the little labels on the apples that said they came from Washington, for after a few moments of detailed examination, the good Officer handed me back the two apples and said we can keep them. I thanked him profusely; glad my acting had saved our food store.

At almost the same time, Officer Johnson had finished the ship’s paperwork and asked to see our passports. I just then realized after two weeks in the sun, my appearance was now darker in complexion and with my short crew cut hair, I looked more like a Panamanian than a Chinese. I immediately took off my hat and my glasses, and tried to rearrange my face to some resemblance to my passport photo which was taken 4 years earlier. The old adage prevailed once again about us Asians, “After awhile, they all look alike.” Office Johnson handed me back my passport without any questions. The time was 1100. We had wasted 4 ½ hours trying to do the right thing by checking in, while the US Coast Guard and the US Customs and Border Patrol had done such a lax job when they are supposed to protect us from foreign threats. And that was our arrival story in Galveston.

Three hours later, we tied up Living Water at Seabrook Marina at Seabrook, Texas, a quaint little backwater town along the Texas coast and thanked Living Water for being such a good ship. I poured the last of the SMS and gave a well-earned toast to my Sea Captain for his diligent, precise, untiring efforts in bringing us back to safety.

We had sailed about 1600 nm in 11 days 21 hours, double-handed, endured all sorts of weather and wind conditions, done a remarkable job on navigation, encountered many ships, had many great laughs, seen some spectacular sun and moon rises and sets, took many photos, caught a few fish, ate some terrific meals, visited by lost birds, performed a sea burial, did equipment repairs, kept our own blog, drank some good Scotch, stocked up a chest full of sea stories that would last until we are well into our eighties, but most of all, renewed our friendship. We have entrusted our lives into each other’s hands and abilities while sailing the deep ocean. As we know sailing is our passion, our way of life, our escape from everyday life on land, we have put our minds and bodies into such a harsh environment, and in the end, we can walk away and smile knowing what we have done. Though very tired and hungry, we thank the good lord for our good fortune and accomplishment.

After a nice dinner in town, we crashed for the night and I left to head home the next morning but not before Terry fixed me a nice fruit salad (from the smuggled contraband) and toast for breakfast. He carried my sea bag all the way from the dock to the parking lot and my taxi arrived just at the same time. We bade each other a long farewell and a big hug. We knew we would see each other soon and would sail many seas in the future. For this is just a short shore leave for us………