Departure

26 April 2016

Update by Maarten van Eden:
“It had been raining a lot in Houston prior to arrival, with flooding evident wherever you looked during the taxi ride from the airport to Galveston. The sky was dark and threatening, but it was dry. The multilane highways would benefit from some maintenance, but it did not stop the many cars tearing along at well over 70 miles an hour. My Russian driver from Moscow got me to the Island therefore quite quickly, but I did notice the unending number of car dealerships and shopping malls on the way. Downtown Houston lay in the distance, as an alien monster from outer space that had recently landed. Galveston on the one hand is a cemetery of the oil industry, with remnants of old enterprises evident along the port, such as the coffee burners across from the hotel, but on the other hand beautiful houses in the old district reminiscent of a golden age not long past. Pier 21 in the old port is a charmingly restored section of Galveston with the Seaport Museum, the excellent Harbor House Hotel and many restaurants and terraces. Here ‘Oosterschelde’ was moored as guest of the Museum, right next to the barque ‘Elissa’ which is its main attraction. After we had boarded on Friday morning it transpired that checking out was one thing but leaving another so we spent our day hosting the hundreds of enthusiastic visitors to ‘Oosterschelde’. In the evening we had the first of the introductory briefings. Getting out of the Gulf of Mexico will take some doing as there is a high pressure system above it only slowly moving to the east. On Saturday morning we took on board our cheerful Pilot who arrived with an oversized mug of coffee in his hands. We disengaged ourselves from our moorings and subsequently he smoothly guided us outside. The sun was shining brightly, there were bottlenose dolphins around the ship and life could not be much better. We entered the 150 mile plus long safety passage to deep water in order to avoid uncharted underwater obstructions left by the oil industry. What remained above water was depressing enough to see. On Sunday we tried our hand at sailing the ship for most of the day and we set our main seven sails. In the light breeze we made impressive headway but sadly increasingly in the wrong direction as the wind backed from southeast to east. So after dinner sails down and we motored on in the direction of Key West and the turn around Florida to the north.”