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This is the condensed version!! After engine problems and steering problems, we thought we had finally solved all the 'little' problems of our sailing experience!! Bob had come up from Victoria to fix our steering, which seemed to go out on the least little whim!! He replaced it with a cable system. We had spent a few days in a fishing camp in Galveston. Our Thanksgiving dinner consisted of a can of something or other, and Laurie and I were both feeling sorry for ourselves!! But we took off the day after Thanksgiving - to continue our grand adventure!! After losing our bearings in Galveston Bay, nearly being run over by a ferry boat and becoming generally scared - we lost our propeller! Well, we didn't lost it, exactly, we just couldn't GO anywhere!!! The engine was running, but the propeller wasn't going around! There was no wind - and we didn't know what to do! (All this - AFTER the dip-stick blew out of the oil pot , blowing a quart of oil into the bilge, and AFTER a fuel hose slipped off and spewed diesel fuel into the bilge!) All of a sudden, we were taking on water!! So we anchored close to shore, where we had an old fort as our landmark - and called the coast guard!!! Bless their hearts, they came in a rubber raft - found that they had two women close to hysteria aboard and were taking on water at the rate of a gallon a minute!! (Somehow, they just never mentioned the gawdawful mess in the bilge!!) So, one of the gentlemen stayed on board with us, while they called in a real boat!! After a few hitches, they finally hauled us back to Galveston to the Yacht basin. We stayed there and Bob came up again to rescue us!! But this time, it wasn't an easy job. We found some folks who hauled us back to where we had been at the fish camp - but to a marina and boatyard behind it.
Here, I had the boat hauled out again - not an inexpensive proposition!! Bob, bless his heart, stayed over long enough to replace the propellor shaft and a bearing or two!
At this point, both of us women were borderline hysteric! Laurie decided she had had enough and bailed out. She went back home, and left me stranded in Galveston. Had it not been for John Jacob - my trusty cat - I doubt that I would have survived those first few days!!
But - it is now Feb. 2000 - and I'm still surviving, the boat is fixed - I HOPE!- I have retrieved my car and computer and feel like I am in touch with the world again. I'm moored at a decent dock - with lots of other 'boaties' - and planning my next move!
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