Thanksgiving Trip

We drove to Tucson, AZ in our motor home for Thanksgiving and enjoyed visiting with relatives. We then continued the trip to San Clemente, CA and spent several days with friends and seeing the area.

Harvest Moon Regatta

Joe raced the Harvest Moon Regatta again on John Bradford's 44' C&C out of Kemah. Out of 280+- boats signed up, approximately 100 boats did not complete the race. The race started with no wind and ended with 30+ knots. The average swells were 10' which made for a wet ride. Unfortunately, 2 of the crew got sea sick early in the race, leaving Joe and his two friends, James Pierson and Danny Shaffer to complete the race. They managed to finish the 150 miles in less than 24 hours.

Padre to Port Aransas Race

Thanks to our crew, we took First Place in the race from Padre Island to Port Aransas on 9/3. Since the race started at Padre Island and we are located 105 miles north, we had to sail our boat to Padre Island. We left on Tues, 8/31 about 2 pm. Our long time friend and sailing buddy, James Pierson, joined us for the sail down. It took just under 19 hours and was a great sail with a little help from the motor when the wind died. We docked at the Sea Ranch II marina in Port Isabel and enjoyed the area for a couple of days. On Thursday evening Dan & Sandy Shaffer flew in from San Antonio and on Friday Craig Bovee drove up from McAllen to join us. We had a reverse start at 4pm on Friday and arrived 29 hours later in Port Aransas. The wind was on the nose the entire trip so between the wind and the waves is was difficult to make a good headway. We survived several squalls but the big storm we were able to sail around and avoid. We had wind up to 24 knots but we hear the big storm clocked 40 knots. It was long and tiring but everyone says they are ready for the next race.

Back on track

Jan completed her chemotherapy and is doing well. The boat repairs were completed and Final Trade is back in the water. Joe is doing well and has been busy checking out all the systems on Final Trade. We’ve decided to spend the hurricane season at the Bahia Marina, Ingleside On The Bay, just north of Corpus Christi.

Glitch month--February

We enjoyed our 1 1/2 month stay in Port Isabel visiting with all our friends at the Circle L in Rio Hondo. But it was time to move on. Our plan was to head east, however, we ran into our first glitch. When Jan went in for a simple outpatient sinus surgery, the ENT discovered cancer cells. Same cancer cells as before and relatively the same area except a very small amount compared to 2007. After visiting with the Doctors at MD Anderson, it was decided that she needed 6 weeks of chemotherapy. Okay, so we'll head north and spend some time at Seabrook. We left Port Isabel on 2/23 at 6 am. Bubba, Joe's long time friend, had joined us for the sail. We sailed all night and by 5 am we were entering Corpus Christi Bay when we ran into our second glitch. We ran the ditch the entire way and when we hit a section of the ditch which is extremely narrow the wind was blowing gale force (40 knots) and the waves were making the bow bottom out. We lost steerage due to the waves and the wind turned us sideways and ran us aground. We were hard aground on sand and oyster shells. We finally got towed and were headed for an anchorage when we started taking on water. Our bilge pumps couldn't keep up and we couldn't determine the source. The tow boat made arrangements for a larger bigle pump to be brought out and that allowed us to keep up with the water intake. We were towed to the nearest boat yard which happens to be in our old stomping ground, Ingleside On The Bay. It turns out there's a crack along the hull by the rudder and a bent rudder post. We ended up with 1-1 1/2' of water in the boat. Now we sit on the hard at Northshore Boat Yard while they put our boat back together. We still had to make our appointment at MD Anderson so we flew to Dallas, retrieved our motor home and settled in San Leon which is 8 miles from Clear Lake. Hopefully the boat will be ready by the time we are through with chemo and we will continue our journey.

Ingleside On The Bay to Port Isabel

On December 30th, we left Bahia Marina bound for Port Isabel. We had an easy cruise down the ICW and made the trip in two days stopping overnight in Port Mansfield. The only things you will see are birds and fishing huts. We enjoyed our 6 months at Bahia and made some very good friends. Our new home for the next month or so is Sea Ranch Marina II. Our close friends, Jerry & Virginia are in the area for the winter and we look forward to spending time with them and enjoying their favorite restaurants.