More waiting, boating friends, discipline

Dear friends and family,

As you all know, the weather in almost the whole country has been cold this last week at least and Texas has not been spared. It dropped to about 21 degrees F last week for a couple of nights, making it a tad too cold for a fair weather sailor to want to boat camp.

When planning a trip like this in the comfort of the cabin of Hongvi, the Alaska sailboat, I can imagine myself heading out in the tiny boat in a decent wind and being comfortable in below freezing temps while camping. When standing on the Texas Gulf shore, feeling the cold north wind of up to twenty knots and now knowing that camping usually involves getting into the water in the process, I feel a lot less sure. Less sure of being safe and comfortable in those conditions.

So, I wait. I wait for this series of north winds to subside. I waited for ten days in Port Aransas, four more days in Port O’Connor, and now more days in Victoria, Texas. 

Gerard, one of my Texas sailing angels recommended that as long as I was traveling by truck and had time, that I scout out the shore stops of places along Matagorda Bay. The first time I tried the fog was so thick that I never saw the water from the road, a whole two hundred yards. My next trip allowed for sighting and also I visited Indianola and found a small RV park and launch site where I could keep the truck for a whopping five dollars per day. Might be a good place to start my still planned sailing excursion. I noticed the sign that recommended that you don’t disturb the alligators around there, so I guess I won’t. I am more hoping they don’t “disturb” me.

Other boating angels, like Michael and Linda, put me up for the night and showed off the project boats under different stages of construction, which was fun to see and talk boats and writing ideas and techniques. Michael is a writer of short stories and novels and wrote a column for dinghy sailing magazines for many years. I have been enjoying reading his books. 

At times, in this waiting period, I have felt like just packing up and going home and calling it a day, except then I remember that I don’t have a home to go to. I could go back to Wrangell and stay on the boat, but there is a reason that I choose to skip the rain and darkness and this year, snow, of the winter.

So, instead, I moved to a better hotel near Victoria, where there are a variety of restaurants, the windows don’t have bullet holes in them, like my room in Port O’Connor, and I have a comfortable place

to write and do research. Cheaper prices too, as I assume the closer to the water you get, the higher the “resort” prices.

In Port O’Connor, my restaurant choices offered fried fish, pizza and hamburgers. Here I have Japanese, Thai, Mexican, Italian and more styles of food offered. And I have Texas’s huge H.E.B. Superstore, homegrown and amazing, where I happened to walk into today when hungry, which caused me to spend a bunch of money on a wide variety of prepared foods, healthy and otherwise. Portions say ” Texas size”.

So, since I choose to stay, I find it easier to be disciplined to work on my next book project and study my online writing course and continue to plan more details of this sailing excursion and also to spend some time in future adventure plans. This actually is a great space to write and plan.

The hotel also has a decent fitness center, so combined with long walks, I keep myself from decaying too badly. 

What have I learned that affects future planning? No more point A to point B adventures. Once I get off that I can go where my curiosity or recommendations take me and just explore, which is more fun and probably more interesting to share via my blog. I enjoy sailing Snark and am researching other places to use her,including inland lakes and inland waterways, but without having to spend so much time in channels shared with ships.

I just received a text warning from the city of Palacios, where I plan to sail, that there is a drinking water alert to boil water first. When I traveled to Colombia and found no one drank the tap water I thought it acceptable as it was a developing country. In Montenegro and Albania the same held true. In Wrangell this past summer we had a boil warning for a week or so. In Lake Havasu City no one drinks the tap water. I tried for my first week, suffered intestinal distress that went away when I went away from the tap water. Here in Texas Port Isabel residents recommend against drinking the tap water too. So, I guess my country is also in the “developing” state. Probably one huge reason for so much plastic bottle pollution as well.

Another thing I noticed about Texas: I like to walk once I park at the hotel to shop and go to restaurants. In Albania, anytime you want to cross a street, you just walk into traffic and the traffic stops, every time, every place. It’s a good thing I didn’t get used to that because in Texas, the crosswalks mean nothing. If you used the Albanian thinking, or even followed the crosswalk signals, you could easily become someone one of the multitude of Texas churches could pray for. I assume that since the summer weather here is often over one hundred degrees, that walking isn’t much of a thing so the drivers aren’t looking for walkers. That being said, I would bet that if you did get run over that the Texans, with their big hearts of helping, would do their best to help get you aid. 

Sending love,

Charley