Part 2
part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6
Overnight, the tide has gone out. Down here, that means that the water is maybe 7 or 8 inches shallower than when I arrived last evening. After breakfast I load up the skiff and drag her for about 30 minutes in the sandy bottomed emerald water. Finally, she is in the 8 to 10 inches that she needs to float with me aboard. To the north, towards Port Mansfield, I can see dozens of wind turbines. Just how far away they are becomes apparent as the morning stretches on and they do not seem to get any closer.
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Morning espresso and oatmeal breakfast. |
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Tide had gone out overnight. |
The water is flat and the wind is down. There is a deep silence conducive to a long conversation with God as I start to row. Contemplation of what lies ahead consumes my thoughts. The boat and I ghost for hours over clear water. As the infamous South Texas sun climbs I lather up with SPF50, then get the bimini up and search for my scrubs, which I think that I’ve left on the bush back at last night’s camp. However, (unlike some) my boat does not berate me at every misstep, and I therefore have only the nagging little voice in my head to listen to. I pull a t-shirt up over each leg, tuck them into the leg elastic on my bike shorts, and pour water over them in an attempt to keep my legs covered and cool in the growing heat.
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Clear emerald waters |
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Little wind and flat, hot rowing. |
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Bimini tilted forward to catch light breeze. |
The breeze slowly builds. By the time it hits 8 knots I tilt the bimini forward as a crude sail to take advantage of it. Standing, I glide over and observe the abundant life in the water. Trout, sheepshead, crabs, mullet, and stingrays, stingrays, and more stingrays. Later in the morning, I pull slowly over the shallow water while watching the bottom go by and I see a stingray right over where I can drop an oar to surprise it. Before the oar hits the bottom, almost faster than I can follow, the stingray spins and I hear (and feel) the barb hitting the composite oar blade.
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South end of Mansfield Channel. |
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Deeper water and wind is picking up. |
The sea gulls and terns are keeping me company, maybe coming by to check out the slow quiet white thing in the water. I let the oars drag in the water as I pulled lunch together. The tuna packets and tortillas were a welcome break from the rowing.
The water gets deeper as I approach the Mansfield Channel. The channel connects the Laguna Madre to the Gulf. As the water deepened, the size of the waves increased. The waves were coming from several directions at once, making a bumpy and unorganized ride. I went ahead and lowered the bimini as the wind had picked up and the flapping was distracting me from the strokes. The waves and chop made forward progress slow, the oars would not land together for a smooth stroke as the skiff was rolling and yawing. I watched as Fred Stone Park and the wind driven generators faded off the stern. At about 7PM I realized I was not going to make the ICW land cut to make camp. The charts showed a crescent of beach to the west and I turned to make camp there. As I started turning, a noise off to my right startled me. A manta ray had just surfaced and was gliding by me with its wingtips sticking vertically out of the water. It was a fine sight that I hadn’t seen since my youth growing up on the Delaware Bay.
Landing on the sandy crescent I see that it is about 6’ wide, with sea grass growing thick shoreward. The beach is part of the King Ranch. Thoughts of rattle snakes, nalgai and ranchers on horseback kept me from venturing into the grass far. I laid out my sleeping bag and pulled out the cooking equipment while watching a wonderful sunset to the west. Firing up the Jetboil I made dinner, dehydrated chicken and rice, not bad. There must have been a hatch of sand flies that day. They weren’t biting, but they were thick. I covered myself with DEET and slid under the mosquito netting as the stars were beginning to show bright. It was a solid night’s sleep with the small waves lapping the beach 3’ away.
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The buzz of a boat in the distance woke me up. It was predawn and the sky was just beginning to change from purple to a light blue. The Milky Way was amazing and still showing bright. Lying on my side, watching the eastern sky brighten, I took stock of how I was feeling. The hands are slightly swollen with a stinging from the blisters that formed yesterday, nothing serious. Legs and back feel good. It was time to grab the breakfast of instant oatmeal and espresso. The sunrise was absolutely awesome. The rays of light radiating upward through the billowy clouds offshore energized me as I began planning the day. Fresh Gatorade was mixed up and I drug the boat out to deeper water to start the day. The campsite from last year’s first stop was the minimum goal for the day. The plan is to row out to the ICW, get into the land cut and row until evening.
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The shore line to the west was coming together with Padre Island, I had reached the land cut, where the width of the water was just the width of the ICW. I heard a noise that was a bit different from the splash, clonk, clonk of the oars. It was a large snake swimming by me between the boat and the oar tip. I am not usually nervous around snakes, but this one was holding his head about 10” above the water. That was a sight to behold. The wind was a slight breeze on my stern; it was going to be a great day. The flats fishing boats would scream by me at I’m guessing 40-50 MPH and they would just stare at me as they went by. I started waving at as many as I could, just to see their reaction. Reactions got more interesting the further from civilization I was.
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The water is not as clear as it was yesterday, a muddy color. The fishing shacks were interesting to watch as I glided by, ranging from well thought out two story affairs with AC to leaning walls barely maintaining the floors above the water. Passing campsite one from 2014, I rowed until about 4 o’clock when back spasms got the best of me. There was a cut through the spoils islands on my left with a solid sandy beach. Looking at the aerial photos, I see the Hap’s Cut is about 2 miles away. Gulping some ibuprofen I began looking for some shade. I lay on my sleep pad under the empty house on the corner and napped. I guess I had been asleep 45 minutes when a flats boat came roaring out of the cut and headed north. The back was feeling much better and I needed to make dinner before the evening onslaught of mosquitoes. The wind had built to a steady 15-20 mph and I had to use my sleeping pad as a wind break to cook dinner. Red beans and rice was on the menu. I sat eating the meal as I got to watch another awesome sunset display. The dolphins were numerous; it must have been dinner time for them. Wind turbines slowly turned in the fading rays of sunset as the sun slid below the horizon.
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The fatigue and realization of what I was attempting again hit me pretty hard. Blisters growing a bit, but that is to be expected. I’ll just have to tough it out until they become calluses. I keep thinking of others that had rowed through hardships and distances and what a walk in the park this must be compared to their challenges. Al Freihofer, Roz Savage and Ernest Shackleton came to mind. “What one man can do, another can do.”- Charles Morse (Anthony Hopkins) in the movie The Edge. In correspondence with Mr. Freihofer, this last year, he reminded me the mental challenge is as strong as the physical. I succumbed to the mental stresses last year trying to muddle forward with no success. I would not let this be the reason for stopping early.
to be continued...
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