Thursday, 7 May 2015 - I woke up a bit sore from sailing this morning. My arms were a little sore, which didn't surprise me, but my left knee was sore too. That's never happened because of sailing before. I guess it was a little choppier out there than I realized. Sailing yesterday was the first time I've ever seen so many fish jumping out of the water to get away from me. One even hit the underside of the front of my board pretty hard. I'll bet that woke him up! Well, actually, it probably knocked him out. I didn't look back to see.
                  There was only about 5 - 10 mph wind, so I decided to head to Galveston to see the square-rigged barque "Elissa", the Official Tall Ship of Texas, at the Texas Seaport Museum at Pier 21.

Here' her URL again: http://www.galvestonhistory.org/attractions/maritime-heritage/1877-tall-ship-elissa

and here's her page on Wikipedia:

To say she's impressive would be an understatement of the greatest magnitude. I can't imagine all the hours and money the organization and their volunteers have poured into restoring her. One interesting thing I learned about her was that she usually only had a crew of 15, that seems like very few to handle a square-rigger of 141 feet and flying as many as 19 sails on three masts.

Friday, 8 May - I spent most of the day straightening things up in the trailer. Over time, lots of things that I put in their places aren't in those places anymore back there in that trailer. I also contacted the fellow whose boat I am so interested in, here at the Houston Yacht Club. I'll get to see it again tomorrow at 9:00am, although he said that he is still very busy preparing a house for sale and won't be able to deal with it further until Memorial Day on the 25th. That's so far down the road that it spurred me to call the fellow in Stuart, Florida. Since Memorial Day is so far off, I may drive over to Florida to look at a couple of boats there, then, if the one here is better, I'll come back for it. To tell the truth, it would be good to be on the road again. Driving is better than just killing time. Of course, I did get in some sailboarding!

Saturday, 9 May - A disappointing day. I got up early to make sure I would get to the Houston Yacht Club on time, started having a cup of cereal and Gary Banks, owner of the CSY called. He and his wife Anne had discussed selling the boat last night and changed their minds. A two week wait for me and then this. I can't really blame them though. It's a really beautiful boat and they are still young enough to enjoy the boating lifestyle. They didn't mean to jerk me around. They just couldn't part with that part of their life. It was either them or me. I lose.
                  Upon hearing that, I called Gary Powers, my parent's sailing friend, to tell him I'm headed out of town and started airing up tires, buying a few groceries and filling my gas tanks for a trip. I got out on the road about noon.
                  I headed out on the road, once again, in my search for a boat; north, then east, and after driving awhile, I came to a sign indicating that I was approaching Iowa. I thought, OH NO!, the GPS has done it again. I'm WAY off course! Well, it turned out to be Iowa, Louisiana and I was actually still headed it the right direction after all. Whew!
                  Near the Atchafalaya River, which is several hundred feet wide at that point, it seemed as if some Utah Corps of Engineers people got together and one said, "Let's build a ten mile bridge here." Another must have said, "Well, the rivers only a few hundred feet wide, so a ten mile bridge would really be an arch, but if we dig a ten mile canal and run the bridge down the middle of it, then it would be a bridge." ...and that's what they did. The "ten mile bridge" runs 10 miles down what appears to me to be a canal about 300 feet wide and has two bridges separated by about 150, running side by side right over the canal with solid terra firma on each side. Pretty though.
                  After that came Baton Rouge and the GPS did screw me up this time. Without warning it said, "Turn right here." and I missed the turn, so it said to go to the next exit, turn left, then left again to get back on the same road going the opposite direction so I could get back to the missed exit. I had been driving about six hours by then, so I decided to pull off the interstate and take a little closer look at a map. Sure enough, it was trying to send me south to New Orleans, then I'd have to come back up again.
                  When I pulled over, I had pulled into what I thought might be a botanical garden, but it was actually the parking lot for the regional Blue Cross/Blue Shield headquarters, so a security guard immediately showed up and confirmed my suspicions about my route, so I reset the GPS and headed over to I-12 to take the short cut. I had been bucking strong cross winds all day, but they finally subsided there at Baton Rouge. I-10 had been very rough, too, but I-12 was much better. Beautiful country. Very green with tall, dense, mixed forests of pine, sycamore, pecan, sweet gum, mimosa, oak and many others, joined by wild, flowering Magnolia trees at the Mississippi border.
                  At sundown, I decided to get off the interstate and headed down to a very small fishing town on the Gulf called Pass Christian. I just missed some beautiful sunset shots. I got out my bike and rode to the docks, but it got dark quickly. I'll have to discover the town tomorrow.
                  One thing I missed today that I wish I had stopped for. Shortly after coming into Louisiana, I came across the bridge at Lake Charles. The bridge crossed the riven on the west end, and as I descended the east end of the bridge, I saw the most beautiful lake and beach I've seen in quite a while. I wanted to immediately turn off the road and check it out, but being on an interstate highway, you can't do that. I couldn't see where to turn off to get there quickly enough, and it being early in the day, I wanted to put some miles under my tires. I should have stopped. I just hate turning around that early in the day and going backward. Gotta go, gotta go.

Sunday, 10 May - I hear from my friends across the street from my old home that the new owner is planning on cutting down the front walnut tree. Oh Well!
                  Oh, Hey! Did I mention that a while back I finally found out what Texas Fire Ants are. I'd heard of them, but never seen any. I am familiar with plain old Red Ants. We had two dens of those in our yard as I grew up in Fort Worth. I used to go watch them by the hour when I was a kid. They never bit me, but they sure bit Tommy Pigg, a neighborhood kid that came to join me one day as I watched. I had heard Texas Fire Ants described as being about 1/8" or smaller and vicious, so that's not Red Ants; they are about 1/4", so it can't be them. I'm also familiar with the really small Black Ants that invade your home, especially in the fall when it gets cold and wet outside, but it can't be them. I don't know anyone that's ever been bitten by them.
                  Well anyway, when I stepped out of my motorhome awhile back at the Texas City Levee, I stepped right onto a Texas Fire Ant mound. It only took me about one second to realize what I had discovered. The moment I saw the cause of the fire on my sandaled feet, I knew these were the true and famous Texas Fire Ants. Amazing how much pain and suffering a critter that small can inflict. I certainly hope I don't "discover" them again.
                  Back to what's currently happening. Today was a most unusual day...thank goodness! It started out okay. I ate breakfast, got on my bike and checked out the boats in the harbor at Pass Christian in about twenty minutes. I asked a man at the Pass Christian Yacht Club where I would find more boats and he recommended Long Beach, just east, and then a little further east at Gulfport. Since the population is about 200,000 in that vicinity, there would be many more boats there. I headed east, stopped and looked at all the boats in Long Beach in about 10 minutes, then on to Gulfport. The drive along the sea was pretty...very white sand beaches and old oak trees on shore.
                  Gulfport had a magnificent, new marina touted as the biggest along the Gulf coast. ...and it is big...but empty, or almost so. I don't think there were but about 40 or 50 sailboats and not many more power boats. I wondered if they were all destroyed in Katrina and people haven't replaced them. The marina is spectacular, except all the new piers are stationary. They should have been replaced with floating docks. The next big hurricane will probably decimate the harbor all over again. It's been proven that the wind in a hurricane isn't the direct cause of the most damage, the storm surge is. With non-floating docks or piers, the surge either pounds them from below and totally lifts all the docks as a unit and piles them and the boats that are tied to up on shore, or, if they aren't carried away, the lines that hold the boats break from the pressure on them. If you tie the boats loosely, they bang against the docks and each other. If you don't tie them loosely, the lines are too short, and they break or pull the boat down. Floating docks need to be able to rise over 15 feet to accommodate for the storm surge or the docks may float over the tops of the vertical posts and all float away together...and that costs more money...but not as much as rebuilding the docks each time and replacing the boats. Will they ever learn?
                  On the way out of town, I refilled my gas tank and got on the interstate. Let me tell you, the eastern half of I-10 has to be the most boring road there is. People complain about west Texas, but at least you can see that there is nothing to look at out there. On I-10 through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the half of Florida that I just drove, all I saw was TREES. In Biloxi, the trees are so tall that they put the billboards on 150 foot poles. I never saw Biloxi. Pretty trees, but ...this has to be where they came up with the saying, "You can't see the forest for the trees." The trees are so thick and tall along the road that you can't see anything beyond. Well, with one exception, in Florida you get glimpses of an eight foot, sheep proof fence that runs for hundreds of miles, literally. Somebody tell me what they are trying to keep off the highway. About the only thing that can get through that fence is opossums and small armadillos. I saw a few of those. Oh, and a box turtle that I saw in Mississippi about 8" across his shell. He probably went under the fence. When I saw him, I wondered what his chances were of making across the road. I figured he'd probably make it about 6" onto the road before he got hit. Well, I was right, but he was a lot faster than I figured. He'd made it about a foot onto the road...where I saw him this morning...in Florida!
                  I digress. Are their so many deer, bears or cougars in Florida that they need a 300 mile long by eight foot high sheep proof fence all the way across the state? Maybe alligators, but I don't think they can jump quite that high.
                  Oh! One more exception to the lack of view. When you come into Mobile, you come out of the forest to see a beautiful, long, high pair of bridges. As you come down off the bridges, the downtown skyline is right in front of you, then you dive into a tunnel that goes under the city and points you back out of town to another long, low bridge that you cross (You can See!...for a few minutes anyway) before dropping into the forest again.
                  At sunset, I was in Tallahassee, so I left the interstate to find a place to spend the night. Everything was hidden by the trees. Big beautiful oak trees with Spanish moss dripping from the limbs, but I still couldn't see beyond the trees. I never saw Tallahassee. The trees were in the way. I got back on the interstate and headed to the next rest area.
                  I've gotta admit. Florida knows how to treat travelers. There is a big, beautiful, clean, brightly lighted, security patrolled rest area with picnic tables and clean, air conditioned restrooms every 35 miles along I-10 in Florida. I new I could count on that when I left Tallahassee at dusk. Today's drive was the most boring drive I can remember, ever! Trees, nothing but trees! ...and somewhere along the way, I lost an hour!

Monday, 11 May - Up and on the road by 8:00am. More of the same boring drive, except the sycamores in the forests are gone and palm trees have replaced them. The sheep/goat proof fence continued most of the day, then was replaced with rabbit proof; the hole size dropping from about 6" squares to 2"X4" and doubled at the bottom. I'm really starting to think they are trying to stop the turtles, armadillos, and opossums; but that doesn't explain the 8' height and, now, 3 strands of barbed wire slanted away from the road at the top. I guess they're just trying to keep everything off the road so the buzzards will go away.
                  After I got on the road, I made it all the way to about an hour south of Jacksonville, about to Daytona Beach, I think, before I even saw a building. Amazing. Lots of trees, though. About there, the highway patrol decided to close off the northbound lanes and make everyone exit the interstate. I never saw any incident that would precipitate such an action, but it certainly had repercussions. Within minutes, the roadway was at a total standstill. I realized it was going to be a significant line of cars so I decided to see how long it would be. Traffic was heavy, so when I reached the end of the line nine miles down the road, I figured it would probably grow to at least twice that if they didn't get the road open really soon. I bet it surpassed 30 miles, but I'll never know.
                  My destination was Ft. Pierce to see a CSY there. I stopped at a rest area just at the edge of town to contact the broker and get directions to the marina. Guess what. Bad timing again. The boat owner told the broker to take the boat off the listings and has taken the boat out of the water for the summer season. It's deja vu all over again, as the misquote goes. I missed the boat that I went to Kemah to see by about a month after having watched it for a couple of years. C'est la vie!
                  I'll take a look at a Whitby 42 here tomorrow, then head 30 miles south to see another CSY, if it's still available.
                  It's going to be a hot night. No wind and already 81°:F in the motorhome at 11:15 at night.

Tuesday, 12 May - Okay, the Whitby was sold two weeks ago, so I took a look at a Brewer 12.8 (Meters= 42'). They are almost the same. Not a bad boat. I'll have to keep it in mind. On to Stuart where I'll meet the owner of a CSY tomorrow. If I like this boat, how can I convince him to lower the price? He's not in a hurry to sell, so I think he's set his price a little high. IF it isn't in PERFECT condition, I know his price is too high. We'll see.
                  After seeing the Brewer, I headed on down to Stuart about 20 miles south where the CSY is, got out my bike and discovered that I had a flat. Patched it with my cheap patches. Still won't hold air. Patched the patch. Won't hold air. Tore the patches off and repatched. Won't hold air. Walked a mile to the bike shop for good patches. Walked back. Patched the tube. Won't hold air. Patched the patch. Won't hold air. Tore off the patches and tried again. Won't hold air. Gave up for the night, but I may need the bike tomorrow.

Wednesday, 13 May - Was today the 13th? Not the luckiest day for me. Patched the bike tube. Won't hold air. Patched the patch. Won't hold air. Accepted experienced help. Tore off patches and tried two more times. Won't hold air. Went to the bike shop and bought a new tube and another tube patch kit. Installed new tube. Everything's good.
                  Went to see the CSY. From the owner's description and price, I was expecting near perfection with many upgrades. Upgrades were there, but the boat, in general, is NOT in perfect condition. The exterior woodwork needs lots of work and refinishing. Luckily, that's only superficial. Part of the sole in the cabin has been pulled out for repair, etc. I certainly need to spend more time aboard for further inspection. He only had about an hour and a half to spend before returning to work. Still, it is perhaps the second best CSY I've seen. I was really hoping this was "The One". I think I'll be looking at other boats in the area.