The quest for blue water

Sailing Aransas bay poses a few problems such as the fact that there is a lot of shallow water, and a lot of sand bars. You run into happily-named little islands like Dead Man Island, or reefs, shoals and the like.
There comes a time that you wonder if sailing the Gulf proper wouldn't be a little more rewarding.
So one fine day we set out to do just that.
    We however wanted to sail all the way, as in  not using the motor. We encountered several setbacks, such as, motor boaters that refuse to yield right of way, cutting across our bow, forcing us to cut short our tack.
.It put us in the open Gulf waters a in time for only about 30 minutes of sailing time, whitch the first mate horded, giving me less than 10 minutes of blue water sailing. So maybe using the motor a little might have been a better.
  I wouldn't say it was a bad day. We had a lot of fun and open water is a sailing experience not to be missed.

Always a good start to a sailing adventure is a dolphin escort

 First sight of the challenge to getting to blue water.

 Breaking waves

We are now running with big dogs

 Returning to skinny water

 Leaveing Port A

Now to beat the sun, and make it back to port before dark.

One of the greatest parts of sailing in any gulf waters is the wildlife, porpoise, birds and fish all of witch offer a chance to take photos. I and my other half both are photo-nuts. I use a Cannon D40 and she(when not using my D40) uses a Cannon XSI so if you see a lot of pics on my blog that is probably why.  

one of the best companions while sailing in the gulf or one of it's many bays are the Dolpins

Kernut the Blond, from San Jose CA makes a guest appearance on the Knot a Clew

Bravely going where no Kernut has gone before, Aransas bay San Jose Island Tx.

Kernut the Blond

San Jose IS

Kernut clearly Knows the wau to San Jose

After leaving California the Knot a Clew went where few 25' SV's had gone before, and there's a good reason for that, as you can see below.

View of Grand Canyon from south rim

as you can see we looked silly towing a 25' SV here, but we were heading to water later. We were headed for Kansas...

Meteor Crater Gallup New Mexico

This is were I learned that you shouldn't use the bow rail to cleat the boat off to the trailer. We added this lesson to the ones we had learned in CA namely how to lower the mast quickly by running under telephone line while trailering to a new location with the mast up.. oops, or running bow first steel channel marker.

Our escort for the Knot a Clew in Aransas bay TX

The SV Knot a Clew Has been the best sailing instructor I have yet come across. I am eternally grateful to Neptune for haveing let me live through th verious errors I have made sailing and the graciousness or the Knot a clew. It took me two mast repairs to remember how to spill air from the main, a bow rail to learn that a bow rail is not a tie off cleat, an anchor to always check to be sure that the anchor rope is attached to the anchor.

Napa River 7/2011

Napa River 7/2011

Grand son Napa river

Grand daughter Napa river