Hello Rockport, Texas

We arrived in Rockport, Texas with zero expectations.  We have been pleasantly surprised.  Rockport is a pretty cool resort community where people live and work.  Rockport Harbor is really old school with docks made of wood plank, not those fancy concrete docks we have become accustomed to.  Also, there are no cleats around here.  Folks tie their boats to bollards.  There is a good variety of boats in the harbor - a lot of sail boats, plenty of power boats and lots of shrimp trawlers.



This is the bay out in front of the hotel.  The structure in the background is part of the Rockport-Fulton Beach Park.

So I woke up on Wednesday morning and took a little walk.  Across the street from the hotel where we are staying is the Rockport beach park.  It was cool getting a first daylight look at the Gulf of Mexico.  I had never seen it before.  What I immediately noticed was that it does not look like anything I had expected.  I have been studying NOAA charts of the area for nearly a year.  The charts show what appears to be a fairly narrow waterway between the coast and the barrier islands that form the GICW.  But, it would appear that the islands are very low lying and made of sand and grass.  It will be interesting to see how they show up on the radar, if at all.  I walked around Rockport Harbor which is a very small harbor, about one quarter the size of Santa Barbara Harbor.  There is a maritime museum and an aquarium, both of which were closed.  Maybe we’ll get a chance to visit them in the next few days to take a break from putting the boat back together.

This is another photograph of the Bay in Rockport.  Off to the left is the town of Rockport, proper.  However, the town seems to go all around us.  There are mechanics shops tucked back in the trees in some cases, and the GPS takes us to what looks like someone's home as opposed to a restaurant.  It's quite spread out and seems to lack what one might consider a city center.

I saw this dude standing alone in the sunrise and thought it might make a nice photo.  This is a rather large blue heron, similar to the ones that prevent new construction and roof repairs in Channel Islands Harbor.

 As I was walking along the waterfront, Brenda called announcing that she was awake.  I was surprised because it was so early.  When I got back to the hotel, we took off again.  We first drove out to House of Boats where the boat is to arrive and be launched into the water.  The place was interesting to say the least.  Again, it was nothing like the modern concrete and steel boat yards we have become accustomed to.  This place is old and is a large dirt lot.  There were plenty of boats on blocks undergoing some sort of work or another.  We located the office and went in and introduced ourselves to John who is covering the office while Jeff and Annie are out of town.  He was nice enough and Annie briefed him on who we were and what was going on.  Then, we took a walk around the yard.  Out front on the concrete quay was a Newport 41 undergoing work/preparation for cruising.  There we met Xavier and Natalie, Belgian cruisers who were there getting their boat ready to go to the Bahamas.  He was working a large sewing machine putting a UV cover onto his gib and she was cleaning the inside of the boat after a bug bomb.  They were nice folks we will get to know better once our boat is in the water on the quay behind theirs.

A typical "Shrimper".  Notice the hanging nets and trawl poles.  There were several out working the waters in front of Rockport-Fulton and Matagorda Bay.  They must be doing OK insofar as all the restaurants seem to be offering fresh shrimp.  The shrimp I have had thus far has a slightly different taste to it.  I know they are fresh and not frozen because all the tails are of a slightly different size.  Oysters, on the other hand, are seemingly impossible to come by.  As a result of the BP problem in the Gulf, fresh oysters are simply not available and the restaurant owners refuse to serve frozen oysters.  No oil on any beach to be found.  Unfortunately, we have seen plenty of trash.

Here's a sailboat and a power boat living next to one another in Rockport Harbor.  It's a small harbor.

 

Another view of Rockport Harbor.

Then we took off on a tour of the area. We drove through the old part of Rockport which is mostly art galleries.  The galleries are funky colored and eclectic.  Interestingly, these were the only places still open.  Many of the other businesses on this main road were boarded up and closed.  While we understand that visitors to this area are somewhat seasonal, it appeared that these businesses were closed for good.  This area of Rockport is undergoing some sort of gentrification and the buildings may be scheduled for demolition.  It was sad.  There are not too many historical sites in Rockport, but there are “historical markers".

Here is a nice picture of Brenda taken behind House of Boats.  She has not even had a pot of coffee yet, and look, she's smiling.

This is the House of Boats in Rockport where Abreojos will be launched and where she will live for the next week while she is being put back together.  This is not what it looked like on the website.  Have faith and trust in the powers that be and know that everything will simply work out......right?    Right.

The Rockport Yacht Club.  They are only open on Fridays.  There is a Halloween party on Friday that we might go to.  This club appears to be a self-help club.  It was established in 1969.  I am used to recognizing burgees having visited so many clubs in Southern California.  I did not recognize a single one here.  There is a Gulf Coast Yachting Association that this club is part of.  They play with each other.  Reciprocals?  What reciprocals?  They are more than happy to have you come in and spend money at their bar.  I introduced myself as a Past Commodore of Channel Islands Yacht Club in Oxnard, California and the guy who we seem to have caught with his hands in the cookie jar looked at us like we were some kind of disease.  Oh well......



This is the Key Allegra Yacht Club.  There is a yacht club everywhere there is a grouping of homes on or near the waterfront.  No more than 150 feet further down from this was a grouping of signs: Men's Club, Women's Club, Tennis Club, etc. club.  Folks in these parts like to get together and form clubs.



This is the Fulton Mansion.

This is the cock-eyed marker placed in honor of the esteemed engineer.  Esteemed?  You would think this marker would at least be level.

There are nice restaurants near the tourist places, i.e., Fulton Beach, but the majority of places to eat include Burger King, KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, etc.  The Google app that is supposed to put you on the spot for different restaurants and other attractions seems to be off.  We tried to find a BBQ place to go enjoy some of that famous Texas BBQ, but three out of three were closed.  We probably could have kept going down the list, but they continued to get farther and farther away.  Since we were batting 0.00%, we settled for a Pizza Hut, got a pie and came back to the room.  We had some cold drinks left in the fridge and decided to call it a day.

Earlier today, I spoke to the truck driver who said he was in Texas and thought he would get in this evening.  So, before going out for dinner, we thought, what the hell, let’s just take a drive over to House of Boats and see if, just maybe, the boat was there.  As we pulled up to House of Boats, there in the driveway, we saw a “pilot vehicle”.  I thought it looked familiar.  It was Mike!  Our boat had just made the turn into the lot and was heading back to where you enter House of Boats.  What a coincidence!!!  So, we talked with the driver and with Mike for a while, agreed to meet at 0800 tomorrow morning and went out for dinner.  I think it is a good omen.  It’s as if we could feel her getting closer and there she was.  She is sort of dirty from sitting on the back of the truck for the last 2 weeks and then from almost 1600 miles of road travel, but she will get cleaned and be back to normal very quickly.

Tomorrow, we will get to the boat early and get started getting started.