Destination Review: Harborwalk, Hitchcock, Texas

After passing beneath the Galveston Causeway, if you head west along the ICW you'll find Harborwalk Marina in Hitchcock, Texas. www.harborwalk.com

The marina suffered major damage from Hurricane Ike and just re-opened with newly renovated facilities in 2013. 

We were able to reserve a slip two weeks in advance with no problem, but there were quite a few transient boaters staying the weekend. 

Slip fees were $75 a night with electric and water hook-ups. The marina boasts a pool, an outdoor bar, a restaurant, a ship store with sandwich shop, a bait shop, gas docks and supposedly pump out facilities although I never got a clear answer on where they were and if we could use them, so don't count on being able to pump out there.

On paper and in the photos, it seems great. Unfortunately, Harborwalk really let us down.

We had a rough sail with strong headwinds, so we didn't arrive until near 5 p.m. on a Saturday. The pool bar stayed open to make us one strawberry daiquiri, but then closed up for the night. At that point Floyd's restaurant was the only thing left open, and with 30 or so boaters waiting for tables as well as a steady stream of locals, there was an hour wait to be seated.

Some of our friends opted to place an order for carry out, so they could eat back on the boat, but they were greatly disappointed with quality of food -- think Chilis quality but at $25 an entree.

Although very willing to pay Harborwalk prices for drinks, we were left without a bar, so we spent the evening sitting in the pavilion drinking the beer we brought, playing guitars and getting eat alive by some of the biggest mosquitoes I've ever seen. 

Harborwalk is built in a swamp with standing water everywhere. Our Deep Woods Off and citronella candles didn't even seem to phase the swarms of mosquitoes.

Normally, this would have been a great evening despite all the mosquitoes, but there was a tension in the air over the fact that we had brought our own coolers. Was it allowed? Was it not allowed? As I said, we were perfectly willing to buy our drinks from Harborwalk, but weren't given the opportunity.

All evening there were also locals pulling up in small motorboats that would just tie up to the dock and then stand beside their boats drinking beer and smoking cigarettes with their stereos cranked up as loud as they could get them to play while shouting to one another over the music -- incredibly annoying. 

Sunday morning we went over to the ship store to pay for our slip rental and then went to the pool to enjoy the water for an hour or two before heading back to Kemah. Unfortunately, a security guard promptly showed up to tell us that we couldn't swim in the pool unless we were members. We calmly explained that we had paid for slips and those were our boats tied up right in front of the pool. He then said we need wrist bands to be in the pool and once again insisted we get out. You know, it would have been nice of the guy in the ship store who took our slip rental money to give us wrist bands or even mention wrist bands in any way. 

At this point I was just fed up with the attitude of the staff and with whole place in general, so instead of walking back to the ship store to get wrist bands we decided to start the trip back to Kemah.

Harborwalk
Hours: 9-5, Mon-Sat, 10-5 Sunday
1445 Harborwalk Blvd, Hitchcock, Texas 77563
Toll free 866-435-8777 or local 409-935-3737

Harborwalk gets a big thumbs down. I've never felt more unwelcome for $75 a night.

Destination review: Job Beason Park, Double Bayou, Texas

Double Bayou lies on the east edge of Trinity Bay, just north of Galveston Bay. (It is VERY TRICKY to get in and out of Double Bayou as the channel is incredibly narrow. Your chartplotter is useless. All you can do is traverse it during high tides and HUG the red channel markers. We got stuck going both in and out.)

The southern branch of the bayou is undeveloped and allows for interesting kayaking, dinghy rides and fishing. The northern branch has several industrial sites, two restaurants, a public boat ramp, a convenience store, a motel, and is the location of Job Beason Park.

Friends have suggested calling ahead for reservations, but our trip to Job Beason Park took place Memorial Day Weekend 2013, and while the public boat ramp stayed busy, our group of three boats were the only boats that used the docks and spent the night.

For $35 a night, you can tie up to one of Job Beason Park's 18 finger piers along the well-built wooden dock. Power is included, but there is no water available.

The bayou is very calm and protected, a nice change after crossing the usually-rough Trinity Bay. Only an occasional barge or tug slowly passing by will ripple the waters.

The power hook-ups are 50 amp, so if you're using a 30 amp cord, you'll need an adapter. We had no problems with our power hook-up, but our friends had an issue with their breaker and did some surgery on the pole to get it working.

The park comes with your standard swingset and other park toys for the kids as well as a covered pavilion with picnic tables and a grill. There are public restrooms available next door to the picnic pavilion, but the stalls and showers do not have doors, and they do not seem to be cleaned ... ever. In fact, the odd shaped metal urinal in the men's room was stamped with "Texas Correctional Industries." If you ever want to experience prison toilets without going to jail, Job Beason Park is your place.

There's a convenience store and motel just across the road. You pay slip fees at the convenience store, and yes, they take credit cards. The convenience store also has public restrooms that are cleaned.

Just past the convenience store is a fuel dock, which is just a few hundred yards from the pier.

Marker 17, the local watering hole, is a short walk or an even shorter dinghy ride away. They're known for their burgers and shrimp, but we only sampled the beer, which was cheap and cold -- always a good combination.

If you're too cheap to pay the $35 for a dock at Job Beason park, you can tie up at Marker 17 for free, but beware, there's no power and the DJ is likely to be playing music very loud until very late.

All the residents we encountered were incredibly friendly and accommodating. They also LOVE live music, so if you've packed a guitar, be ready to play.

Be wary of loose dogs. There's no leash law in the area, so all the dogs roam free. Two came to visit our boat, and there were several hanging around the convenience store. None that we encountered were aggressive, but we have small dogs that could easily be injured even if a big dog was just playing, so we had to keep an eye on them.

Bring your bug spray and make sure you've got space in your holding tank, but Job Beason Park gets a thumbs up for a great place to visit.

Job Beason Park
W Bayshore Rd.
Oak Island, TX 77514
409-252-3474

First lesson learned - docking a bigger boat

Despite the hangovers from the boat warming party, everyone wanted to go sailing on the new boat Sunday afternoon.  We spent a lot of the morning goofing off while everyone got into place. The girls recited all the lines they knew from Titanic to me. Impressively more than I know myself. 

We disconnected the shore power, fired up the engine and prepared to cast off. I ignored the shallow water alarm that was beeping on the chartplotter thinking, the water is always shallow here, we'll be ok.

I started backing out of the slip, and I ran into a problem. The boat was not turning.

At 27 feet, the Seahorse was short enough that even if you back straight out of the slip, you still had enough space between piers to make a turn. At 34 feet, Gimme Shelter almost bridges the entire space between piers. I pulled forward and attempted to back up again. It still wouldn't back to starboard.

I was also noticing that once moving forward or backward, it took a lot more reverse throttle to get Gimme Shelter to stop moving when compared to the Seahorse. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion and all that.

I was starting to get nervous. I had five passengers watching me struggling at the helm.  The guys were standing on the front, and I'm sure they would have helped, but there was a pretty big language barrier, and I don't blame Fred for being nervous.  

Just as I was about to bump the dock behind us, I pulled forward again.

I slowly backed up again. This time the wheel jerked in my hands, which meant the rudder had plowed into the bottom. This sent our aft to port instead of starboard -- not the direction I was wanting to go, but at least we weren't sideways anymore. I started backing down the lane to the channel, and for a second I thought everything would be ok. Then the wheel jerked in my hands again as the rudder hit more mud, and we were once again turning sideways.

Thank goodness me and Fred now know exactly how to deal with each other in high stress situations. There was a period of time when we first started sailing together where the second anything went wrong everyone paniced and there was a little bit of chaos. We have both learned to at the very least hide our panic from each other in stressful situations. A calm atmosphere is really a must in this kind of situation.  

At this point, I gave up and pulled back into the slip.

I was embarrassed, and I felt like I let everyone down, but trying to back out a large vessel during low tide that I had driven all of one time was just not a good idea. I didn't want to smash into something and end up in one of those "credit card captains" videos on YouTube

In consolation I invited everyone onto the Seahorse, which has a deeper slip further down the pier. Everyone was more than happy to go out on the little boat. It was just the joy of going out on a sailboat that everyone was really looking forward to. I think in the end it was only important to us to take the new boat out. It backed out with no problem, and we were off for a quick cruise through upper Galveston Bay.

Everyone took so many pictures on the way out.  I forget there really is a lot of cool things to see.  

 I asked Buenjy to take pictures of Fred for me since we never get pictures of him. Such is the life of a photographer. It's unfortunate that Fred and I both had crazy hair after drinking all night and sleeping on the boat. He still looks good to me though.  

All in all, everyone had a great time and I was very happy to have everyone on the boat. Anyone and everyone is welcome to come sail with us anytime! There is nothing like sharing the joy of sailing. (Unless we don't like you ... or it's low tide.)

Boat party

With Gimme Shelter safely berthed at Marina Del Sol, it was time to let go of all the anxiety that had been incurred over the past couple weeks of discussing this purchase, surveying, getting loans, finding insurance, etc. This is Mary's boat, so she was taking care of most of that stuff, but not being in control of any of it was stressing me out.  This boat was my first major purchase, and the first time I've ever taken out a loan.  At first the thought of spending this much money really made me sick to my stomach, but as the day got closer and closer all I wanted to do was get it over with and start enjoying my new boat.

Everyone in the marina got a tour Friday night. Then Saturday I went jogging (just had to brag a little, didn't you?) and had a late breakfast with the crew of the Tina Marie while Mary disappeared to Wal-Mart for two hours.  I got super lost.  The Walmart in Kemah is off the google maps.  

We went back into Houston for lunch with my parents who were visiting, and then it was back to the marina just in time to start the boat warming party.

Hamburgers were grilled.

Guitars were played.

Rum was drank.

It doesn't always turn out nice when your friend bubbles collide, but in this case everything went well.  My friends are mostly French speaking, and our friends on the dock happen to be French Canadian, so the conversation flowed nicely.  It was nice that my friends got to hear Freddies singing/guitar playing for the first time. 

I showed my friends the "little" boat and they were impressed.  

I went to bed around midnight, but I'm sure the neighbors hated us because I heard our overnight guests still stirring at 4:30 a.m.  Not everyone goes to bed at 11 on Saturday nights!

Sunday arrived with a ringing in my ears and a pounding in my head. Mary tried to sneak through the salon to make coffee, but with two people on the fold-out and two people in the aft berth, there was no way to be sneaky enough without waking them all. (I knew we should have held out for a center cockpit with an aft cabin!)  You lose the large cabin in a center cockpit, and besides how often do we have three couples on our boat?  Once so far.  

I went to work making pancakes, eggs, and bacon for both our crew and the crew of the Tina Marie. Then Mary served breakfast using her new nautical themed plates from West Marine on the Edson table in the cockpit. I think everyone was quite impressed.  There's nothing like waking up to a sunrise behind palm trees.  You sort of forget how magical it is when you're there every weekend.  It's nice to have fresh eyes look at your life to get some perspective. 

Delivery

I'd read about boat deliveries on other blogs, and a few of my marina friends will regale us with the tales of their weeks at sea and emergencies they overcame while delivering boats various places.

Well, I finally got to make a delivery -- sort of.

We had to move Gimme Shelter across Clear Lake from Seabrook to her new slip at Marina Del Sol.

This seemed like a very simple, straight-forward task. I took Friday afternoon off work thinking we might even take a little sail out on the bay before bringing her in.  Wow that was incredibly hopeful.  

We had only brought one car for the weekend, so we were either going to have to leave the car at Seabrook and beg a ride back or we could catch a ride over in a dinghy. Either way, Mary wanted to go to the new boat first to start getting her ready.  I was excited to get the boat cleaned up and aired out.  Unfortunately I had forgotten all of my cleaning supplies at home, expecting to make a quick run to the store for the essentials on arrival.  

As we arrived at Seabrook, our insurance agent started calling saying he'd never gotten the engine serial number for the insurance policy. I said, no problem, let me read it off to you.

It was at that point I realized the reason he didn't have the serial number was because it had most likely been unreadable for the better part of a decade.

This set off several calls to the broker who began placing calls to the seller who began searching documents to track down this elusive number while I headed to Marina Del Sol to take a dinghy ride back.  He ended up finding the number on a previous survey, and not on the registration papers like you would think.  

The first hitch in our plan came into play when I arrived at Marina Del Sol to find the lowest tide I'd seen since January.

There was no water.

Our neighbor said there hadn't been any water all week, but that MAYBE the tide was coming back tonight.

With Mary busy cleaning the boat, there was nothing to be done except to sit down and have a beer with my friends on the Tina Marie.

Perhaps that was a bad decision since I soon got an angry phone call asking why I hadn't come back to pick Mary up. Oops.  By soon Freddie means well over two hours later.  I was expecting him to come right back to get me, and having no cleaning supplies at all I was quickly lonely and bored on the new boat.  Feeling rather jealous and abandoned I might have been a little overly grouchy.  

I drove back around the lake and retrieved her, the broker retrieved the engine serial number, and soon Mary was on the phone with the insurance company again experiencing first hand why people say "boat" stands for break out another thousand.  I am thoroughly convinced I will never have money again.

I did a little more cleaning on the Seahorse and a little more drinking on the Tina Marie, all the while keeping a close eye on the tide.

Around 7:30 p.m. I said, "I think it's deep enough."

I really wasn't sure that it was deep enough, but the tide was coming in. I figured by the time we got across the lake and back, it would be deeper.

We hopped into our friend's dinghy and set off across the lake.  I just want to say thank you to Ray for taking us across the lake, but that Ray's dinghy is much too fast for me. We will not be putting a 20hp outboard on any dinghy we buy. 

Just as we were pulling up to the boat in Seabrook Marina, the dinghy suddenly died. Our friend Ray attempted to restart it, but it was locked up.

I grabbed a paddle and sculled over to the dock. A quick inspection showed that the painter had gone under the dinghy and gotten tangled in the prop. This seems familiar.  Unfortunately, it was wrapped too tight to untie and none of us were carrying a knife. Nor did we have a knife on Gimme Shelter.

No problem, I said. We'll just fire up Gimme Shelter and tow the dinghy back.

Everyone came aboard, and I began cranking the motor on Gimme Shelter. It cranked and cranked and cranked and cranked, but it never coughed to life.  Your new boat not starting seems like it would be your greatest fear, but after so long on boats you learn to expect problems.  It's the only way to keep your sanity.  

Call number two to the broker then occurred as I had to ask him the correct starting procedure. Embarrassing.

Once I'd heated the glow plugs with the electricity actually turned on to them, she started right up.

The guys helped me with the dock lines, and we were off -- making our delivery across Clear Lake just as the sun began to set.

Pulling into the marina on my new boat, standing on the bow, with all of our friends yelling and waving from the dock, was definitely a high point in my boating career. Nothing is as fun without friends to share it with.  

Even with the dinghy delay and the extended diesel starting procedure, the tide had not come in as high as I'd hoped it would, but we were able to plow through the muddy entrance to Marina Del Sol and get situated in our new slip with no issues.

We (I) finally had (my) our new boat. Just kidding, Freddie!

(And Ray's dinghy was fine. We cut the painter loose, pulled up the motor and had it running again -- no problem.)