Day 4 Honey, I lost my winnings and a little more...

How is this for a wake-up call?  "Honey, I woke up early and went to the casino after my breakfast..."  The rest is history, and so is the "profit" from yesterday's gambling.
     Otherwise, we spent a relaxing but unprofitable day at L'Auberge Casino and Resort.  This morning we rode our electric scooters about 1.5 miles to shop at West Marine, Target, Sam's Club and Bed, Bath and Beyond. After 3 days on the water we needed some perishables as well as buying several items that we "forgot" to bring. We followed the shopping with a nice lunch before heading back to the boat. The Captain even managed a short nap this afternoon followed by dinner in the hotel.

Tomorrow we will head off towards New Orleans, which is 4 plus days away... Gotta love this relaxed life with no itinerary! Besides, we need to leave the casino before the Admiral even thinks about mortgaging the boat...

Day 3 onward to L'Auberge Casino (and resort)

We pulled up the anchor and departed from Port Arthur, TX a little after 8:00 am and arrived in Lake Charles, LA a little after 3:00 pm.  A distance of about 55 miles with scattered clouds and temps in the 70s. After registering, we headed to the pools, and the Admiral took this lovely self portrait of her toes with one of the pools in the background.

We then had a lovely dinner followed with some "obligatory" gambling . The good news is that she tripled her money, but the bad news is that she only started with ten dollars...

We are staying here for two nights so that tomorrow we will have time for shopping, a little check up for the boat and oh yes, more swimming and gambling.

If you walk out the rear entrance to the casino, this is the view from the door (literally). Lucky Us is attracting a lot of admirers. I suppose the name has something to do with the attention.

Day 2 Galveston to Port Arthur

     We left the Galveston Yacht Basin a little after 8:30 am.. The Captain tried to sleep in, but the Admiral prevailed... The weather forecast was for (just) 40-60% chance of showers.  Not great weather, but we have travelled this route 4 times before so we decided to go and not plan on seeing much.  As it turned out, the only rain consisted of just enough to get the windows wet (twice).  With a high temperature in the mid 70s, we had a very enjoyable trip.
     Our journey lasted a little over 7 hours and covered 55.7 miles. The photo highlight of the day was when we passed a drill barge in the waterway. When I e-mailed this photo to son Bob, his reply was:
"Brings back memories of the first drilling rigs I went to. Directions to the rig were always the same: when the road goes into the water, the boat dock is on the right side of the road." Needless to say, he was working in New Orleans at the time.


     Today's other photo is of the Admiral manning the helm. ...and by the way, she is giving a shameless plug for the Texas A&M branch campus in Doha, Qatar.



Tomorrow's desitnation is the L'Auberge Casino and Resort in Lake Charles.  The Captain will be doing his best to control the Admiral - you know how successful that will be? Ha!  Hopefully, we will not have to end the trip there due to lack of funds... Stay tuned!

Day 1 The Start of our adventure

Third times a charm - we hope! After two previous attempts:

1. -February, 2012 We started out, but after 2 days one of the diesel main engines failed and needed a re-build that took 2 months. Given the delay, we decided to spend the Fall Semester at Texas A&M University at Qatar.  Terry worked for three months as Interim COO of the branch campus, and John Taught Introductory Physical Geology to 11 Petroleum Engineering majors

2. - We had hoped to leave in February of this year, but John had a little health scare in mid January. Not to worry! He seems fine now and is leaving with the doctors full knowledge. So after a 4 month delay and no re-occurence of the problem...

3. - NOW!!! Let the boating adventure begin! Here we are leaving our home port at 12:40 pm today (Tuesday, May 14, 2013).

     We arrived at Galveston Yacht Basin after a leisurely trip of about 4 hours. About half of the trip is in the Houston Ship Channel, which is the busiest in the world. It used to be kind of scary passing the huge tankers and container ships, but after 7 years, we have gotten used to it. Upon arrival at the Galveston Yacht Basin, we did top off the fuel tanks with 188 gallons of diesel (we carry 600 gallons plus as well as 300 gallons of fresh water). Diesel is about 70 cents a gallon cheaper in Galveston...

  The admiral fixed dinner on board, and we are now watching the sun moving toward the horizon over the Galveston ship channel. Something tells me that it is going to be “early to bed” tonight. It was a short day on the water, but the morning was spent running a couple of last minute errands and finishing loading clothes on the boat.

 

     As a side note, as we were leaving our home dock in League City, Texas, we noticed that a family of Mallard ducks had already "adopted" our dingy dock as their new home...

The Lucky Us Great Loop Adventure - Trip Update

We, John and Terry, are back in League City after spending the fall in Qatar.  Our plan for starting the boating adventure was to leave the dock sometime in January.  John, in an attempt to curb Terry's expectations had starting using the "F" word - February, but we were both still committed to getting everything ready.

Well, "the best laid plans of mice and men often goes astray" is at work again.  We made a quick trip to Rockport to visit Terry's parents.  We had a great visit which included helping them celebrate their 62nd wedding anniversary.  We were just a few hours away from heading home when John had a seizure (the first ever for him). We did not know what was happening to John so called 911 and ended up in the hospital in Corpus Christi. The next four days John was prodded, poked, and coddled.  The good news was that no underlying cause was found.  The bad news was that no underlying cause was found.  We are told that the chances of another seizure is very low but John has to be seizure free for 6 months before he can drive.  While driving a car after a seizure is regulated driving a boat is not; however, the doctors are recommending we wait.

So...today we are officially in the "F" month and Terry's expectations have been curbed.  We decided to adjust our plans again. Our new goal is to leave the dock in the May/June timeframe. We will spend a lot more time on the Gulf of Mexico/Florida segments of our trip then we originally planned and thus extend our trip from 11 months to 1-1/2 years.   In the meantime, we will continue with our boat preparations and practice this retirement/grand parenting thing!  They say "practice makes perfect" and we are close to having the weekday movie matinee process perfected!

John, by the way, feels great!  And Terry is enjoying her new role as chauffeur - after all, that puts her in control!

Below is a picture of Terry trying out our diving hookah system.  This will allow us to  work under the boat when needed to cut away crab or lobster lines that can wrap around and foul the propellers.

Adventure Detour / Alternative

Howdy from the Middle East - Doha, Qatar!

As many of you are aware, John and I are spending the fall in Doha, Qatar.  I will be doing maternity relief work for my good friend Julie Barker whose daughter, Ava, is due next week and John will be teaching.  Both of these assignments are at the branch campus of Texas A&M University in Doha.  I arrived earlier this week, Monday evening, and started working on Tuesday.  :o)   John will arrive here early in August. 

The following are some snapshots of the view from the apartment.  I've also included some pictures of the three bedroom 2-1/2 bath interior.  The place is quite nice and there is plenty of room for visitors so please consider a trip to the region! 

View from apartment window - on the 29th floor.

Another view from apartment.

Living Room

Another view of Living Room

Dining Room

Kitchen

Spare Bedroom (the 2nd one has a queen size bed)

Master Suite Closet

Master Bedroom

Bathroom

Space Shuttle in Houston Ship Channel -what a way to end our 20 day trip!!!

Space Shuttle in Houston Ship Channel -what a way to end our 20 day trip!!! Posted: 01 Jun 2012 02:46 PM PDT After yesterday's failed attempt at returning to our home port due to the bridge being close from 0700 to 1700, we took no chances by getting an early start. We left Moody Gardens at 6:18 a.m. headed for the Galveston Causeway Railroad Bridge. This was not without some trepidation since I had tried unsuccesfully 4 times the night before to call the bridge keeper on the VHF radio... As we approached the bridge, it went down, but there clearly was a train on the causeway approaching the bridge.

Ultimately, we made it through the bridge and were finally on the last leg of our 20 day adventure.  The picture (left) shows the base of the SE (Galveston) side of the new bridge. The base of the new bridge is formed by vertical steel pilings. Once the base of the old bridge (red barge) is removed, the new channel will be 300 feet wide instead of the older and much more dangerous width of only 105 feet.

When we were about 4 miles from our turn from the ICW into the Houston Ship Channel, I noticed the unmistakeable silhouette of the space shuttle crossing our path up ahead... Sure enough. We had heard on the news last night that the shuttle was about to arrive in Galveston on its way to the Johnson Space Center. About the same time we heard the Coast Guard announcing that there was a 500 yard exclusion zone around the barge carrying the shuttle. We were going about 3 knots faster than the "shuttle" so we caught up to her entourage in the Ship Channel (picture above).

There were 3 tugs (one pulling, one pushing and a "spare") and at least 7 small Coast Guard boats forming the safety zone around the shuttle. We proceded to pass even though we were well within 500 yards by virtue of being in the Houston Ship Channel.

We were allowed to pass, but several of the patrol boats (photo to the left) kept between Lucky Us and the shuttle. Just a friendly reminder...

This really was pretty exciting! Neither of us had ever seen a shuttle launch, landing, etc., but this special opportunity was a pretty cool substitute!    

Here is yet another picture of the shuttle taken during our point of closest approach. I love this view of the shuttle complete with "UNITED STATES" in big bold letters on her side.

...and oh yes, we arrived safely back at our dock on Clear Lake about 2 hours later.  On the way from Galveston Bay into Clear Lake boats were starting to gather to watch the shuttle arrive along with seemingly dozens of patrol boats from several state agencies as well as various counties and cities.  There are 10,000 boats on Clear Lake, and quite a few of them were going to create a huge traffic jam. Personally, I just smiled to myself since we had already had our own special moment all alone with the shuttle.

     Well, that's it.  Our 20 day trip to Brownsville/Port Isabel consisted of 15 days with at least a few miles travelled on the water.  We covered about 800 miles and saw lots of beautiful scenery, wildlife, etc. Yes, we are happy to be home, but I am not at all sure that we were ready for the trip to end.  I guess that all is well.