Greeting from Houston, Texas

[hkolanski]

Hello,

Elaine and Henry are new to Cruise's Forum, and we are also new to cruising.

A little background on Elaine & Henry: Elaine is a financial advisor, and I am retired, working for 35 years in the oil patch. My carrier's have included commercial diving, logging engineer, log analyst, and business development, focused on subsea engineering, offshore installation of deepwater pipelines, and floating production platforms, i.e. SPARS.

Our latest cruising adventure, and also my retirement gift, we purchased a Beneteau 50, year 2000, in Oriental, North Carolina. We cruised offshore the eastern coast of USA, and the Gulf of Mexico. We basically made 2 day jumps offshore, i.e. Oriental, NC to Beaufort, NC, via the Intercoastal Waterway, entered the Atlantic ocean via Beaufort, NC, and sailed to the following ports: Charleston, SC, to Fernandina Beach, Florida, to Cape Canaveral, Fl, to Fort Pierce, Fl, to Rodriguez Key, Fl, and finally to Key West, Fl. We visited Key West for an extended period of time, and then we made an open water passage from Key West Florida to Galveston, Texas, a 1000 nautical mile track. 3 squalls later, and 7 days, we arrived in Kemah, Texas, via Galveston Bay. Sailing offshore the Louisiana and Texas coasts, we sailed approximately 250 miles offshore, in ultra deepwater, in order to skirt all of the 4000 platforms that are located in the Gulf of Mexico. For me, it was a dream come true, to take a tour sailing past the offshore deepwater platforms that I have worked on throughout my 35 year carrier (Technip) in the oil and gas business.

My current retirement activities include baby sitting my 2 year grand daughter, trading stock on the internet, weight lifting, playing golf, dancing (country western and west coast swing), and obviously, making constant and never ending repairs / upgrades on my Beneteau 50 (in search of perfection!).

[Steadman Uhlich]

Howdy Elaine and Henry! Welcome aboard this forum!

I enjoyed reading your introduction. I can imagine it must have been fulfilling to see those platforms from the deck of your own boat and having the freedom to go as you please where you wanted to go.

You mentioned 4,000 platforms in the gulf. That is a lot!

Best wishes for happy times here and sailing too.

[JPA Cate]

hkolanski,

Welcome aboard, sir. Thank you for the informative intro.

I must say I enjoyed thinking about how it must have felt to sail past the rigs. One time, Jim had his kids out for a day sail, and the Monday afternoon commute traffic was thick on the Bay Bridge, and the older of the two said, "eat your hearts out, commuters!" Maybe not too different.

Long term cruisers are we.

Ann & Jim

[Garrettw]

Greetings from a fellow Houstonian and oil patch worker. It's been a good business to be in!


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[RTB]

Howdy from Hitchcock, Tx. The boat is rockin tonight!

Ralph

[Garrettw]

Ralph, no doubt! What a nasty day.


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[Sailmonkey]

And another Houston welcome from a logging engineer.


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[xeon_tsd]

Welcome aboard, Austin during the week, and Kemah on the weekends that I can escape.

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, Elaine & Henry.

[ErBrown]

Welcome aboard hkolanski,

Like Xeon above, my wife and I are in Austin during the week and have just moved out newish (to us) boat to Waterford harbor, and will be spending a couple weekends a month down there.

Hope to see you around,
EB

[Jethro411]

Welcome. I keep a Catalina 36 in Long Beach but I live north of Houston. I'm looking for a little, clean, great deal of a 30 footer to keep in the kemah area to get my local sailing fix. I'm looking for some basic local knowledge of seasonal sailing issues, water depth, traffic, going off shore from Galveston etc. Maybe the original poster and I can gain from some local experience. Thanks. Not sure exactly the best sub forum for that.


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[Garrettw]

Originally Posted by Jethro411

Welcome. I keep a Catalina 36 in Long Beach but I live north of Houston. I'm looking for a little, clean, great deal of a 30 footer to keep in the kemah area to get my local sailing fix. I'm looking for some basic local knowledge of seasonal sailing issues, water depth, traffic, going off shore from Galveston etc. Maybe the original poster and I can gain from some local experience. Thanks. Not sure exactly the best sub forum for that.


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Maybe a new post in the Scuttlebut / Destinations / Atlantic & Carribean forum about Galveston Bay destinations? That might actually be useful. A lot of the stuff on the web went away when TMCA switched their website around.

[Jethro411]

Great thanks. And welcome to the original poster. Sorry about the thread hijack.

[Cavalier]

Welcome (back) to Houston, from another "inhole" Engineer..

Which marina did you settle for in the end?