A Crazy Start

We started our journey from Galveston, Texas on a Friday evening with bananas onboard and David was whistling and Joe said don’t give Poseidon the good rum, use the cheap stuff …

all BAD juju in boat lore. 

A shot of rum for Poseidon before setting off.

Our original weather window had us leaving midday on Friday, May 15, but it didn’t quite happen that way. Our son and future daughter-in-love came to see us off that morning, then my Mother and my niece and nephews came by to see us off one last time. A little after noon, our friends on RumAway said goodbye and headed back to Kemah. Our friend Joe that would be crewing with us, was still trying to pick up a couple of last things for our journey and was running a little behind. There were storms brewing over land and the forecast went from pretty good to really icky. 

Around 2pm, our weather routers called to see where we were and if we had already headed out. We told them we were still in the marina and they told us they “highly recommended” that we wait out the round of thunderstorms coming and then we should be good to head out. We could feel the wind kicking up and we still needed to get diesel so instead of taking the boat over to the fuel dock, we gathered up our jerry cans and pushed them over to get them filled. We pushed about 45 gallons of diesel bark to the boat and loaded them on the rail about the time the storm hit. It lasted about 2 hours as predicted. David and Joe filled the tanks from the jerry cans and around 5:30 pm we were finally on our way. 

Hauling diesel back to the boat.

Before leaving the slip, we looked again at the forecast/future cast on the radar and Predict Wind. Both showed that the storms that were over land would stay over land and not move offshore. As we left the Galveston Ship Channel headed out into the Gulf of Mexico we watched a fantastic light show over land. There was lightening in various colors all across the sky and it was amazing to watch. 

As soon as we cleared the ship channel, I put our pre-made dinner in the oven to get it heated up. I was feeling fine, but had taken a Dramamine just in case. Ashton had also taken Dramamine and was wearing her Relief Band, but as the waves started building to 3-4 feet, she was down for the count. It only took a couple of hours before she was puking off the back. Although I was ok up top, going below was getting rough. Joe has a stomach of steel, so he went down to send dinner up to us. 

Designated puking spot…

We started our first round of night watches that night. Everyone on deck had on their inflatable PFD. Joe went down to sleep for a few hours and David was at the helm. The waves were a steady 3-5 feet and we were beating into them with a head wind, but we were slowly making way. I stayed up top to try to sleep, because down below was bad for me. Looking back I never actually got any sleep that night. 

Around 10pm Joe came back up on deck to take his turn on watch. By this time, Ashton had puked a few times and was doing her best to just lay still and I was still trying to catch a few minutes of sleep. About an hour into Joe’s shift, we heard an alarm. We figured out it was the auto pilot yelling at us because it couldn’t keep a course. The waves had gotten so big we were only making 2 knots an hour. Joe throttled us up and we inched forward. It was pitch black, but you could see the milky wave and all of the stars; although the wind was ferocious at 30+ knots. We could only see the waves from the back of them; however, we were pounding into the waves and would bury the bow to where we could see the lights under water. At this point, David was still asleep and Joe and I discussed whether we should consider turning back, but we figured David was ok with what was going on so we just kept inching forward. 

Around 1am on Saturday morning, David came back up for a shift. He had no idea how bad it was as he was sleeping soundly in the aft cabin. Joe went down to sleep again. After about 30 minutes, David and Idiscussed turning around. We called our weather people and they told us that they couldn’t see the end of this thing we were in and they agreed that turning around and heading for Galveston would be a good idea. So we did. There was one caveat though, a cold front would be arriving about the time we would get to Galveston and it was going to be a big one. 

Once we got the boat pointed back towards Galveston, we stopped pounding and started wallowing. Since we were now going with the waves behind us, we could actually see them coming. Many of them were taller than our arch with our solar on them. That would mean these waves we had been beating into were 10 - 12 feet high, maybe higher. It was quite the rush with Verano surfing down these waves, sometimes making upwards of 10 - 11 knots of speed through the water. It felt good though to have made the decision to get out of the mess we were in. 

Sometime during this night, I had finally convinced Ashton that she would be best down below tucked into a corner somewhere and she ended up on the salon table bed. She said it was easier to hear the normal sounds of things clanking down below than to hear the waves and wind howling and the boat pounding. There was a lot of clanking and things had flown off of every shelf and flat surface and the place was a wreck, but we couldn’t get it put away until we were back in the slip. 

Everything ended up on the floor after being tossed about for 12 hours.

Back up on deck, around 5 am, the cold front hit us with 50+ knot winds and blowing sheets and sheets of rain. Luckily our brand new radar was doing it’s job since we couldn’t see anything through the rain. We buttoned up as many of the enclosure panels as we could but we were still getting wet with the blowing rain. Everything was soaked. After about an hour, we were back down to moderate to light rain and the wind was down into the 20 + knot range. 

At 730 am on Saturday May 16, we finally arrived back to the same slip we had vacated just 14 hours before. The captain and crew were exhausted and fell into a deep hard sleep. We woke up somewhere around noon and sent a message again to our weather routers to see when the next good opportunity to leave would be. The message received was that the next morning, Sunday May 17, would be perfect to leave.

Spoiler alert, we threw the bananas away, left during the day and gave Poseidon the good stuff, after a family prayer for a smooth crossing. We are currently in Miami figuring out what our next plan is. 

Until Next Time,

Cindy, 1st Mate S/V Verano