Texas Outlaw Challenge at Bayland

Whenever I tell people unfamiliar with TMCA about our cruises I mention that a TMCA cruise can have as few as one boat participating, or as many as multiple dozens!! It has been a very long time since we have had anything falling into that second category, and thankfully this past weekend’s Bayland Marina cruise did not fall into that first category! Registration had been open on the website for some weeks, and the number of boats registered had been stuck at three, although one of the registrants had notified me at one point that they had sold their boat and obviously would not be participating! They questioned me about un-registering on the website, but I asked them not to because the more boats showing as registered for a cruise sometimes entices others to get signed up also!

Here (https://www.texasmariners.com/event-5578396) is the link to my write-up on the TMCA website for this cruise, a cruise which I had led several times previously. And the “Goose Creek Dinghy Excursion” part was something that I had “invented” as a part of Bayland cruises going all the way back to 2001!

So on May 21^st I received a copy of that automatic email which goes out to thank someone for registering for a cruise. In this case it started out:

Dear Tim Marshall,
Your event registration has been completed. Thank you for registering!

With this acknowledgement I knew that I would not be the only boat on this cruise! But as the start date of the cruise approached, there were weather questions!! What turned out to be TS “Albert” was churning around out there in the western part of the GOM, and although it was pretty clear that it was not actually going to come to Texas, the peripheral quite strong easterly winds promised to make for some potential rough going between Kemah and Bayland Marina!

So Tim and I talked it over on Thursday the 20^th, this as we both made plans to head to our respective marinas very early on the morning of Friday the 21^st. And at that point we both would decide if we were still a “go”. Getting myself up at zero-dark-thirty, I made it down to Portofino by about 8:15, but when I called Tim he had experienced some car trouble and had to return home to switch cars. We had earlier planned to head out together, but he told me not to wait as he would be delayed awhile, and so I fired up the engine and got underway aboard s/v Silhouette at about 9:45.

The strong east winds had one thing going for them in that water levels were up all over the bay by about 2ft, and this was going to be a good thing when we got to Bayland where the approach channel, and the marina itself, is sometimes shallow. But heading out onto the bay in the Clear Creek channel, it was quite rough, with waves really building up, as they always do in such conditions, right there at the mouth of the channel by the Boardwalk. I did put my foulie jacket on thinking that I was going to get very wet, and I did in fact take some spray, but as I got out into the bay aways, things got a bit better. But still, in an effort to minimize the amount of time that I would have to endure such conditions, I made a course straight out towards the HSC at the North Boater Cut, with the idea being that once I got behind the islands out there that things would smooth out, and in fact, after about an hour of motoring, that did turn out to be the case!

About the same time that I reached the ship channel, Tim had arrived at his boat and was starting to get things ready. I briefed him on the conditions, and then I turned northward to head up (parallel to) the HSC towards Morgans Point. There was a lot of tow traffic in the HSC that morning, this because the channel had kind of been shut down for a couple of days by the VTS (Vessel Traffic Service) due to the very strong winds. So things had finally started to move again with the backlog of tow traffic, although ships would not start moving again basically until Saturday.

So I arrived at Bayland at about 1:00pm, found a vacant slip on C-dock, got tied up, and quickly got the electricity hooked up and the a/c turned on!! And then it was time for a nap! Tim, aboard s/v Bless Your Heart, did not arrive until much later in the afternoon, and when we met up to plan what we might do that evening we decided to head up to O’Neal’s for dinner at about 8pm, there to listen to Hamilton Loomis and his band who were playing that night.

(https://www.facebook.com/HamiltonLoomis)

Mr Loomis is an amazing musician, and also entertainer, especially when he gets really rockin’ and climbs up on the tables and the bar, and the venue then goes wild! We both ordered a chicken fingers plate, along with cold beers, and there was so much food that we both needed to-go boxes. On a band break we walked back to our boats, although I then decided to go back up for his final set of the night, and another cold beer! It had been a pretty good day!!

Saturday dawned bright, and less breezy, and after breakfast (Tim ate the rest of his chicken!) we both headed up to O’Neal’s deck to wait for some Outlaw Challenge go-fast boats to arrive as part of their poker run event. In the past there usually have been half a dozen or more of them showing up by mid-morning on Saturday, but this time there were only a trickle, maybe only six or so all day. Their more important destination for the day was Harborwalk Marina in Hitchcock, and so this time I guess most of them just decided to go there directly. But I have included some photos here in this report, and more from my own weekend cruise experience can be found in an album on my flicker site at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/15251435@N08/albums/72177720318402112/

According to my cruise write-up, Saturday afternoon was when we were supposed to do the “dinghy exploration”, but since neither of us had dinghies along with them that event just did not happen. And due to the heat, it probably would have been a quite uncomfortable little jaunt anyway! And so by late Saturday afternoon (after more naps…), we both had decided to do dinner on our own boats, but then to meet up at 8pm again to go hear Mark May and his band who were playing that night. (https://www.facebook.com/themarkmayband)

And so we did, and O’Neal’s is just a great place to sit out there, watch the sun go down behind the Hartman Bridge, watch the flickering lights of cars and trucks crossing the bridge as it gets dark, to watch the lights of ships and tows in the ship channel, and listen to the music!

Sunday dawned as another nice day, and since Tim had gotten up earlier than myself, and since he had already gotten everything ready, he then took off before I was ready to go. But because there were some predicted chances for a t-storm or two that afternoon, I did not dawdle for too long! So I soon made my way out the Bayland channel, and after waiting for an outbound ship to pass by, headed south. There was still quite a bit of tow traffic in the HSC, but including now some other ships. There was somewhat of a breeze, but as I have increasingly found myself doing, I just pretended that I was a trawler and motored all the way back to Kemah.

So, it would have been very nice if more TMCA boats had signed up for this cruise, but two I would submit is better than one! There was that same weekend another TMCA Texas Outlaw Challenge Cruise, with that cruise going down to Harborwalk, and with nine boats participating. I have been a member of TMCA for a long enough time (28 years!) to remember that there was once kind of an un-written rule that competing cruises were not to get scheduled for the same weekend. That line of thought pretty much went out the window some years ago, but one would have hoped that, on a fine early- summer weekend, that we could have gotten more than 11 boats out there cruising! Maybe next time…

    

   

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