Our sail from Rockport TX to Gulfport MS

Today was the day we chose to head to Gulfport, Mississippi.

We usually try to leave first thing in the morning, but it was Sunday and we wanted to go to church and wished to see our friends once more before setting sail.

We attended Hope Church with Jennifer again. Another good sermon. We were tempted to stay another day because they were doing baptisms at the beach on Monday and we would have liked to have celebrated that with them. But we needed to get to Gulfport, Mississippi before the weather changed. Luis and Yvonne stopped by for a last visit. They, together with Jen, gave us a great send-off and we will truly miss them.

We’re still learning the ins and outs of weather routing, but it looked to be the optimal time to head out according to our Windy and Predict Wind apps. We left Rockport confident that for the majority of the way we would be reaching rather than heading upwind, that we would be traveling in wind speeds sustained above 10 knots so there would be little motoring, and we would arrive ahead of the northerly that would blow in on the second of May.

Previously we had tried switching off shifts at the helm throughout the day and night. It didn’t work that well for us. This time the plan was that Chris would sleep as much as possible during the day and I would sleep as much as I could at night. Albeit he didn’t get as much sleep as he should have this first day because I was nervous and had to wake him with questions like, “Why is the chart plotter beeping like that?” or “Is that shrimp boat trying to hit us?”

Over the days ahead I would get the hang of it and learn how to decipher the markings on the map, judge distances more accurately and understand how to make slight adjustments to the autopilot without taking us too far off course, but that first afternoon was quite stressful. Even so, I thought it was a great start despite the water being choppy and not as much wind as predicted, so we had to fire up the motor after all, but it was still much more pleasant than the trip down to Port Aransas had been.

Chris doesn’t like to sleep below when we are underway. He sleeps on the bench in the cockpit on whichever side of the boat will keep him in place as it heels over, usually on a damp cushion. In fact, if you could pan out to the right a bit in the photo below you would see him soundly sleeping there. I don’t know how he does it.

As I lay on the bed, staring up at the small, square-foot hatch above, I saw two little lights darting back and forth across the windowpane like fireflies. It took me a moment to realize that they were stars that had managed to peek through the thick blanket of clouds and were set in motion by the side to side, rocking of the boat. Before long I was sound asleep.

When Chris woke me later to take the helm, I was ashamedly, very grumbly about it. I knew he needed rest, but I remembered previous nights, sitting in the dark and dampness, sweating from the humidity while being simultaneously chilled to the bone by the wind. And I was fearful of running into someone or something unseen in the dark as our radar had quit working. But I knew the burden was unfair to Chris, so I dressed my nervous, weary self and brought my body along with my bad attitude to the helm.

I was surprised to find the night so pleasant. Unlike the stuffy cabin, the warm breeze was comfortable; the sky was clear and there were so many stars out. Traveling by boat would be a constant joy if only all nights could be like this!

While Chris was sleeping, I watched the sun rise, casting a pretty pinkish-orange hue through the sails. In the distance I witnessed what I believe to be a 6' Marlin leap up out of the water to splash back down into the blue gulf. It was a promising start to what I hoped would be a glorious second day.

I almost always choose to sleep below. We have a quarter berth with windows that open to the cockpit and that is my preferred sleeping quarters while underway. It is the least bouncy place to rest below deck, but it is also next to the engine compartment, so it gets hot and stuffy when the Yanmar is running. Since we continued to motor sail through the night, I slept in the Pullman berth closer to the bow. Correction, I slept in a pool of sweat on the pullman berth closer to the bow. As the evening wore on the choppiness lessened as the increments of time between waves lengthened but the humidity seemed to increase exponentially. If I were young and hot instead of old and fat, I’d probably sail naked!.