Merry Christmas from Venice!!!!

The trip from Kemah to Venice was, overall, pretty good.  We didn't do as much sailing as we had hoped.  The wind and current were on our nose most of the time but we still made pretty good time.  We saw lots of oil rigs, some crew boats and not much else.  The guys with me saw some dolphins but I didn't see a single one until we were coming up the channel to the marina.  We lost of our buddy boat, Storyville, shortly into the first night and didn't see them again until we got to the marina.  We tried calling them on the radio but could never reach them.  They think my radio is messed up, I think it is theirs.  It was hard to tell how much electricity the wind generator made because we ran the engine so much but it appeared to work very well.  I tried using the new satphone to pull in email and weather once.  It was a bit frustrating at first but it did finally connect, no idea what I did to make it work so will probably be trial and error next time as well.  It was fun getting the free texts on the satphone.  The front hatch leaked a bit when we submerged the bow under some waves and the head wasn't sucking water in like it was supposed to.  I think we have fixed both o these issues, won't find out until we get under way again.

Venice itself is a fishing community, we our the only sailboats here.  Lots of shrimp boats.  The marina was open yesterday until noon, closed today and open part of the day tomorrow.  From what I can see there is no grocery store or really any other amenities here.  We were able to get fuel though.  We added 65.5 gallons.  We burned about 3/4 of a gallon an hour on the way here which is normal.  When we left Kemah the tank wasn't full, now that it is and with our extra gear I will probably need to raise the waterline on the boat.  I'm gonna try to hold out until get my next bottom job.

We are watching the weather closely, a front is supposed to be blowing through right now.  We had some rain earlier and the wind is picking up.  If all goes well we will push off the dock tomorrow and see if we can get South and East as much as possible.  I would like to make some of these bigger jumps while I still have crew.  That being said I am not too excited about sailing in 40 degrees and 30 knots of wind, even if it is downwind & I have crew.  We will wait and see.

Some Stats:

Engine hours at start 2600, at end 2666

Distance traveled:  311 Nautical Miles

Did not run the generator