Around the Island

By John Ira Petty - Houston Post 8/28/83 

Unsettled start marks circumnavigation project

There were wakes, cross wakes, counter wakes and cross counter wakes and some that didn't fit any of those patterns. They were dark, shiny irregular hills and valleys in the pre sunrise grayness of the Galveston Ship Channel. 

One of those peaked hills arose at just the wrong time and doused the Seagull outboard. The motor sputtered in protest and died. The brownish orange sails of the gaff rigged cat ketch pulled the narrow 21‑foot boat on through the bouncy chop and toward the Bolivar Rhodes.

 It was an unsettling beginning to a limited sort of circumnavigation. Both Robert Rothbard, the boat's Texas dealer and I thought sailing around the world would be a fine idea. But we were off only two days a week. 

So Galveston Island had become the target. The plan was to sail from the launch ramp at the Galveston Yacht Basin Bait Camp, through the Galveston Channel and around the South Jetty. The goal of that day's sail down the island's Gulf side was to reach San Luis Pass at its southwest end by dark. On day two we hoped to sail up West Bay, under the 1‑45 causeway and back to the launch ramp.

But first we had to cope with the confused chop in the channel and with an outboard that showed no signs of life. 

The boat seemed not to mind the motors, demise, and moved along nicely despite the confused wakes. Powerboats continued to stream past, one ignoring the inbound Bolivar Ferry until its captain sounded a warning signal. 

We learned later that there was a fishing tournament that Sunday morning, which had accounted for some of the channel traffic. Business at the bait camp ramp had been brisk enough to strain even the vocabulary of proprietor Joe Martin, a man who runs an efficient operation with a flashlight, a bicycle and a booming voice prone to occasional bluntness aimed at those who don't meet his standards. 

The boat, a Sea Pearl 21 made by Marine Concepts in Clearwater Florida, has a 19‑foot waterline and a 6 1/2‑foot beam. It is a scaled up version of Herreshoff's 18 foot Carpenter design of 1929. It is partly decked, with a self bailing cockpit. A large opening in the deck between the masts can be covered with a snap‑on cloth, and a convertible top can be mounted to keep out spray and provide shade. 

We were confident the boat was seaworthy enough for the Gulf passage under conditions anything like those predicted ‑ southeasterly winds at 10 to 15 knots. With leeboards and a kick‑up rudder, the boat is beach able and has a 6‑inch draft loaded, which seemed to be just about what was called for in shallow West Bay. 

It was a close reach up the channel. We passed Fort   Point as the sun was trying to come up, and were relieved to be free of most of the wakes as the power boats were able to spread out some. 

It wasn't all smooth sailing between the jetties. One large pleasure boat went by fast and kicked up a considerable wake. We turned into it, and bounced over the first wave. The bow went into the wave behind it, and enough water splashed over the bow to cause Rothbard to put up the convertible top. 

By 8 a.m. we were rounding the end of the South Jetty. The wind was from the northeast, despite all predictions, but conditions were just about ideal for the Sea Pearl. The abandoned lighthouse on the South Jetty receded as island landmarks slipped by.

Rothbard had kept trying to get the reluctant Seagull going, winding and pulling the starter. cord in 5‑minute spurts as we moved through Bolivar Roads and down the island. The motor sounded occasionally like it was about to start, but would not. 

All this is nothing against the Seagull, which was designed for use on the surface and not on submarines. And eventually, much to It’s credit, it did start, after Rothbard had cleaned its sparkplug and we had decided to take turns winding and pulling.  

 We were off the Flagship Hotel when it sputtered, then roared' to life. We let it run for perhaps halt an hour, until the tank was empty. ‑Most circumnavigators encounter doldrums, and it seems that even we who aspired only to sail around Galveston Island were no exception. The surface of the green‑brown water became almost glasslike although swells from the southwest made the boat rise and fall. We refilled and cranked up the motor again, and with occasional puffs of wind filling the sails, moved past Galveston Island State Park two miles offshore. 

Hundreds of baseball‑sized jellyfish moved in bunches toward the beach, thick enough in some places to make us worry about damage to the propeller. 

Tank empty, we sailed until the bridge finally came into sight, after, a seemingly endless stretch of beach. The wind had picked up, and as we approached the high part of the bridge, shifted to the southwest. Under both refilled motor and sail we passed under the bridge, and beached the boat at San Luis Island for a fuel stop  our 1.5 gallon can was Just about empty. 

The Cape Horn of Galveston Island was rounded, the can filled, the wind was fair and it was only 4 p.m., so we decided to continue, to cover as much of West Bay as possible against the uncertainties of tomorrow.

 The boat fairly flew past mudflats and shallows, some hosting flocks of gulls. The boards occasionally touched bottom,‑ and the wake kicked up by the Sea Pearl sometimes broke in the thin water. Twice we had to get out of the boat and walk it across shallow patches. 

Plans for the night were uncertain. Unless' the crew is a married couple or awfully good friends, the Sea Pearl will only sleep one, although another could camp in the narrow cockpit. We thought it better to find a beach or‑ island, so one of us could sleep ashore, rather than anchor out. 

Crescent‑shaped Snake Island, about 8 nautical miles from the pass, seemed an ideal haven. An approach from the north was foiled by insufficient water, but we had better luck from the south. Soon 'the boat was anchored inside the crescent, secure for the night and protected from just about any wind Oat might blow.

Around the Island

Mirror like waters, Snake Island highlights 

Last of two parts 

Carancahua Reef stretches across West Galveston Bay, a barrier punctuated with pilings stakes, and shallows that dry out at low tide. We ran aground there, weighted lee boards bumping against hard mud and shell. 

That wasn't as serious as it might have been. We raised the Sea Pearl 21's boards and the kick up rudder, and got out. We pointed the boat back in the direction we wanted to go, then walked it until we got to water deep enough to sail on  a foot or so. 

Robert Rothbard, the boat's Texas dealer, and I were in the second day of a sail around Galveston Island. The day before we had launched the Sea Pearl, a Florida‑built 21 foot cat ketch, at the Galveston Yacht Club Bait Camp ramp and sailed down the Gulf side of the island. The weather was settled, after a week of thundershowers and before Hurricane Alicia. 

We had entered West Bay through San Luis Pass, then sailed to Snake Island about 8 nautical miles up the bay. 

With showers, air conditioning, a soft bed and maybe a MacDonald’s, Snake Island might not have been a bad place to spend the night. It had none of the above. It did have about as many mosquitoes as you might want, and a raucous breed of seabird that apparently thought nothing of missing a night's sleep to squawk continually at unwelcome visitors. 

In all fairness, the crescent shaped island did offer protected area on It’s concave side, where we beached the boat and set an anchor in its broken shell surface. If the island off the Jamaica Beach subdivision offered few comforts of civilization, neither were there any of its complications. And, despite the name, we saw no snakes. 

The sad truth is, I wasn't very well equipped for camping. With Rothbard on the boat and I tent less on the island, we had passed more pleasant nights. We weren't sorry to set sail a little before 7 a.m.

That morning's sail more than made up for the discomforts of the night. With the wind abeam, the Sea Pearl galloped up the bay. "That Monday was Incredible," Rothbard said later. 

There was a little confusion about which points on the chart matched those we could see on the Island. Carancahua Reef pretty much resolved any doubts about our position. 

It delayed us only a few minutes; then we were off again on the delightful beam reach. "She does better heeled," Rothbard said once when I moved to the windward side of the narrow boat and had the masts pointing just about straight up. 

Indeed the Sea Pearl did. The tombstone transom seemed to close the gap in the surface sliced by the bow and filled by the narrow hull with its flat bottom. The rudder left a thin line of turbulence in the water that stretched straight behind us. 

The wind held until we reached the mudflats extending westward from South Deer Island, just a couple of miles from the Interstate 45 causeway. Clear of  those flats, we were able to head off toward the dual humpbacked bridges, and the low concrete railroad drawbridge behind them. 

Motor running, we approached the three spans, only to see the bascule railroad bridge being lowered. It stayed down only a moment. Pushed by the motor we moved under the highway and through the railroad bridge. That hurdle behind us we were able to sail nearly directly for the Pelican Island bridge  and the Galveston Channel. 

That bridge caused some misgivings until we were able to make out the vertical clearance numbers on the shaded sign over the span next to the movable part of the bridge. The 29‑plus feet the sign showed was reassuring, and we passed into the channel about 10 a.m. without any problem.  

The Sea Pearl had averaged more than four knots from Snake Island to the Pelican Island Bridge, with minimal assistance from the motor. 

Less than three miles remained to be covered, but it was among the more fascinating parts of the route. Three huge jack  up drilling rigs sprouted from the channel. freighters   and bulk carriers lined its sides, their massiveness brought into sharp focus by the contrast as we sailed our tiny vessel past them. 

The masts of the Elissa, the 19th‑century barque restored by the Galveston Historical Foundation, towered above just about everything as we neared the yacht club and the end of the voyage. 

Rothbard sailed the boat up to the bait camp ramp as smoothly and efficiently as he had handled it throughout the trip. We were tired, and much in need of showers, but a little sad when the sail ended with the finality of a foot on concrete. 

Looking back on it all some highlights come to mind  the orange brown sails reflecting off the Gulf's mirror surface, and the stark and unpretentious beauty of Snake Island. There were man‑made things too, like the San Luis Pass Vacek Bridge and the Galveston Causeway, both a good deal more impressive from the water than   from the roadway, the commercial ships  and the Elissa. 

One long‑distance encounter made us even more grateful for the Sea Pearl's shallow draft and light weight. A speedboat, a two-seater with a powerful inboard engine, was aground behind Snake Island when we landed there the first night. They were perhaps a mile away.  A man and a woman were aboard, and all efforts to gun the boat off the flats of Snake Lagoon with the engine seemed only to compound the problem. By nightfall the boat was just about out of the water. 

The next morning we still could hear the engine occasionally. We had stowed our gear and sailed about a mile when a very tired couple In  the speedboat roared by. 

     "All night, man" ......  were the operator's only words.