Chapter 14

I’d like to say that Freeport lost it’s charm and got boring ... so we left.

What actually happened? Some of us got a little rowdy and we were requested to vacate. Before we left I polled the crews:

“What do you want to do?”

All five trailer sailors and half of the attending club members wanted to go back to Galveston. I wanted to keep going south west. My crew was a little more mature than the yahoos and the 11 of us decided that continuing sounded like fun.

The Gulf coast trends south. The coast has a lot of west but it has south in it. After Matagordo the coast is more south trending and a tiny bit west.

South of the Brazos River mouth, the shore line started changing. Because the German submersibles started sinking ships in the Gulf, the Coast Watch road was set up during WWI. The road was still there but the houses were getting few and farther between. At the San Bernard River mouth, the ICW gets close to the Gulf.

Some little ways west of the San Bernard River mouth is Caney Creek and west of that civilization loses its civil. Sailing along the costal sand islands it’s fairly easy to see where there used to be an outlet to the Gulf.

During severe storms, the sand moves. Where there was an inlet is gone and a new inlet opens somewhere in the islands. After Matagordo Beach and the mouth of the Colorado River it is possible to discern the remains of the old World War II coast watchers road and the three former air bases.

But that’s all by the bye. The meat in the informational sandwich is ... the Lagoon 42 has the bells and whistles that smugglers need ... side scan sonar, forward looking sonar, depth finder and two radars.

Short range radar looks at things within a couple of miles and does it in great detail.

The long range radar sees what’s out there up to 25 miles.

There’s a magnetometer and a few other interesting toys that take a ton of money to buy.

The magnetometer registers the possibility of metal in the sand. The graph printer shows the metal location, the location of the boat at the time, and the time of day. The side scan sonar shows the Gulf bottom either side of the catamaran’s route. The forward scan sonar displays what’s ahead on the bottom. The electronic feed from each of the instruments is all part of the graphing printer printout.

If something interesting happens, I can find my way back using the information printed by the printer.

The Gulf Coast has been the scene of some nasty storms ... and nasty storms before good weather forcasting means that some ships sailing the Gulf didn’t arrive at their destinations. Wrecks.

Lots of wrecks ... Wrecks from 15o0... 300 years of wrecks ... Spanish wrecks ... wrecks carrying the loot of Central America and I was looking for one or several of the lost Plate ships. I didn’t expect to find one ... but it was fun looking. The Lagoon has all these toys ... why not look.

Coastal Texas is mostly lee shore and a lee shore is hell on pure sail.

Back before engines ... whether internal combustion or external combustion ... ships were at the mercies of the gods of the sea. Weather wasn’t reported ... it was guessed at. He who guesses correctly reaches his destination. Wrong usually meant dead.

Ships driven ashore sink, break up or burn. On a sandy shore, wrecks can and are swallowed by shifting sands. The beach sand is always moving. During extreme weather, swallowed ships buried centuries ago have the disgusting habit of emerging on the beach ... or just off the beach.

So ... I was looking. I may have found something.