By Charlotte Byus
Many years ago, we purchased our first of two sail boats, it was a Cal-2-27. This boat was over five years old when we purchased it and it had been sitting in its slip for three during a divorce. It was not in the best of shape, to say the least, but it would be when the two of us finished with her. Her name was Silent Mistress. There was a saying that if you changed the name of a boat it would be bad luck so we kept the name. I must say I looked pretty stupid with that name on the back of my T-shirt. Oh well, I wore it anyway and laughed to myself.

Every weekend and every day off and even every vacation, we were at the boat working on re-building her. I must tell you it was very hard work and I must say I have never worked so hard as when we took her out of the water to do a bottom job. That means taking all the scum and barnacles off the bottom and cleaning and waxing the sides of her. Someday I’ll write a story about the duck with the blue webbed foot. (stay tuned)

This story is about a trip out to sea, well at least to the end of the Galveston jetty. From our dock to the end of the jetty is over six hours of sailing. I learned to sail from a man who was blind, I had been told never and I mean NEVER learn to sail from your spouse. Good way to mess up a good marriage and hate sailing. So I didn’t, I chose a nice blind man who became a good friend.

Off we went for a three-day weekend in our shiny Silent Mistress. We got to the end of the jetty and headed left. Rob told me to take my compass heading and enjoy my time at the tiller. So I did, well sorta, you see when you learn to sail by feeling the wind on your face following the compass is not too easy. After getting myself lost at sea with no land in site, RR got us back to the jetty.

On the last day of our adventure we headed home, Seabrook Shipyard, RR took the tiller most of the way through the jetties and gave me the tiller just as we got to Galveston and said head straight for that buoy. That buoy is #26, that is Bolivar Roades, it is the crossroads from the ICW and the Houston Ship Channel. So that is what I did. I was told to get as close to the buoy as I could so that I would be out of the way of oncoming tugboats and ships coming down the ship channel. So I did just as I was told. RR was working on something on the main sail so he was not paying too much attention to me until he heard the bell on the buoy just as I slid into the side of it. Of course, he looked at the buoy and then turned and screamed at me! “WHAT THE HELL! YOU HIT THE DAMN THING!”

Well I was doing what you told me to. As you may guess, he took the tiller the rest of the way home.

[April-13-2020]