We have crossed into Louisiana

It took us about a month to cruise almost the whole coast of Texas (minus an unfortunate incident that held us up for about a week). And with weather being what it is, we moved slower than we thought. However, there is something to be learned in all of this: when you are cruising, there really should be no time line. A schedule is a cruiser’s worse enemy. It can make you do things you otherwise know you shouldn’t for no other reason that you feel you have to get somewhere. Now that we are over this, we are actually beginning to slow down and just live wherever we happen to be. As a result, every day is noticeably different and the challenges are always new and refreshing. Enough of this feel good crap. Let’s talk cruising.

We had an interesting time in Taylor Bayou. It’s not like there is anything to do there. It’s just a stopping spot. It’s a very good one at that. You anchor in this canal that is about 200’ wide and 15’ deep almost all the way to the banks. The holding is very good. The wind protection is good (at least from the standpoint that there is no fetch over which the wind can blow to create troublesome waves). There is no current to speak of, and the water is otherwise completely flat. When looking to the north, the scenery to the west is magnificent. When looking to the east, it’s all about the refineries and chemical plants of West Port Arthur. In fact, when the wind finally died, after two days of blowing like stink, you could actually hear the “hummmm” of the machinery and all that heavy steel making chemicals for Dow. So, again, when looking north, you just plug your right ear and listen to the sounds of the bayou. You can enjoy hearing the heron, egret, hook-bill, pelican, and marsh sparrow. You can listen to the wind as it pushes through the tall marsh grass. The other day, however, when looking and listening to the west, there was nothing but fire, and more fire. Coming on the heels of a big south wind followed by another norther, by a tornado watch, and generally difficult travelling conditions, this was a real boot in the shorts. So, to awaken on Wednesday morning to a cloudless sky, glassy water, cool temperatures (just over 30 degrees F), a purple and orange sunrise

highlighted by the crescent moon with Venus bright on its south-eastern hip, and decorated serene with “swamp gas” floating across the mirror-like bayou, was truly wonderful. For people who insist on sleeping late, all I can say is, “Too bad you missed it because there will never be another one like it.”

So, after I scraped ice off the windows, defrosted the isinglass, did all my engine room checks, prepared my wheel house with the day’s charts and cruising guides, and made coffee, we started the engine, pulled the hook, and made off. During the previous day, we discussed bypassing a couple of bayous we had thought to anchor in (really, once you’ve seen one Texas bayou, they are not all that different) and decided, instead, to go to Lake Charles, Louisiana.

This was not originally planned, so it took me a little while to pull up, download, and print the charts and gather all the information we would need. It turned out that it was a little less than 60 miles from Taylor Bayou, so it would not be a terribly long day, and once we got there, hell, we’d be anchoring in a lake that has plenty of water under the keel.


That reminds me. A friend of mine named Valerie, who, along with her husband, are also full time cruising “liveaboards”, presently enjoying the rigors of cruising the coast of mainland Mexico, asked about the water depths we are dealing with. As some of you know, we rely on NOAA charts for navigation in both electronic and paper format. The electronic charts are “raster” charts which means they are essentially scanned paper charts which, when combined with a GPS, turn your laptop computer into a chart plotter placing your boat electronically on the chart in your precise location, thereby enabling you to see where you are on the chart. I prefer the raster charts to another form of electronic chart known as a “vector” chart. Vector charts are electronic conversions and do not look like NOAA charts. Vector charts have the advantage of being electronically “charged” with all sorts of good information such as spot soundings, point and click applications for marinas, harbors, bathroom facilities, etc. I have always used them for cruising in Southern California because they come on a chip I plug into my Raymarine RL70CLC. I also have them running on a laptop just for redundancy. However, over the last year, I found a new software called “Sea Clear” which uses raster charts. Now, keep in mind that vector charts are not NOAA charts. They are very expensive little bastards, with each chip potentially costing hundreds of dollars. Moreover, vector charts are probably out of date before they even hit the shelves. NOAA raster charts, on the other hand, can be downloaded for free, run on just about any chart plotting software, and, if downloaded regularly (in either print or electronic format, or both as I tend to do), they are as up to date as the most recent USCG Notice to Mariners for a given geographical area (generally about a week or less, in some cases). So, as far as the depth of water goes, it is determined first and foremost by looking at the NOAA raster charts.

On the raster charts, there are a lot of places where no depth information appears. Taylor Bayou, for instance, is one. The next source of information generally available is contained in cruising guides. Fortunately for us, most places have been explored and written about previously. So, although there is no depth information for Taylor Bayou contained on a nautical chart, the cruising guide tells you that there is a canal, that it is such and such wide and such and such deep.

Another good source of information is Google Earth. On several occasions, I have studied satellite photographs of an area, and actually printed screens to have at hand when going into a place. It is very helpful to have a bird’s eye view.

Finally, there is the depth sounder, fish finder, bottom finder, or whatever else you want to call it. This is an electronic device that tells you what the bottom looks like. It will tell you how deep the water is and, if you get good at reading it and working with the gain and contrast, you can even begin to tell what the bottom composition is; whether or not there are any rocks or structures under you, and generally, if there are any fish. I have met captains on tuna boats who claim that, using their sophisticated sounders, along with their years of experience, they can actually tell the difference between a yellow fin tuna and a blue fin tuna based on the bone structure of the fish they claim they can see. I’m not so sure about that. I also know skippers of squid boats who claim they can tell the difference between a school of squid and a school of anchovies.

So armed with all this information, there is still one caveat: charting and the placement of aids to navigation is a GOVERNMENT OPERATION. This means that, even with the most accurate, up to date, charts and the most sophisticated electronics money can buy, it is all still a lot of guess work. In hurricane prone areas such as the Gulf Coast, marks get blown away and sometimes do not get replaced. Moreover, sand bars (or mud banks, as the case may be) are not static. Rather, they move. So, after it is all said and done, local knowledge is probably one of the best tools money cannot buy (unless you spring for some drinks with a local skipper).

The bottom line (or the canal bottom) is this. You know what your charts and electronics tell you, but you still have to exercise a lot of caution when cruising in unfamiliar areas. For instance, when we went to Offetts Bayou, we had studied the charts, looked at sat. photos, and read the cruising guides, but we still got stuck in the mud. Another example was coming into Lake Charles, Louisiana. The charts showed 5 feet at the entrance to the lake. Not being sure what it all meant, I reached out to anybody who had been here before via Activecaptain.com, and the AGLCA Discussion Forum, and got a response from someone who lives on Lake Charles and has a 42’ Californian. He sent me an email with a good explanation and his phone number. So, when we were coming up the Calcasieu River and a few miles from Lake Charles, I called him and asked for some clarifications. He told me the Lake hadn’t been charted in a while and that there was actually more water than what the chart showed at the markers where one enters the lake. Moreover, he told me to aim for the Civic Center and go straight across the lake aiming for it. He also told me of a 50’ deep hole we would come across where the city dredged for sand and mud to build the new marina. Well, he was right on. Nevertheless, we slowed to 3 knots as we crossed through the markers and nosed in very slowly and quietly. We came to a spot less than a quarter of a mile in front of the center of town and anchored in 7.5 feet of water. PERFECT! To get out of here, we will simply bring up the track in that is saved in the computer, and follow it out. Moreover, I plan to go onto Activecaptain.com and post a review so others following us will have more information.
Depths around here tend to be shallow. You just have to get used to it, and go slower than normal.

Back to cruising……

We had a great trip from Taylor Bayou to Lake Charles. We had sunny skies the whole day. The water is still very brown running east on the ICW, but we hear it clears up as you get to western Florida. The tide seemed really low as there was exposed mud on both sides all day. We used the exposed banks as an opportunity to look for alligators, but saw only a dead one being munched on by a couple buzzards. What was most striking, however, was the change in environs between Texas and Louisiana. Granted we are only a small handful of miles into Louisiana, so we cannot say for certain what it will look like further east of here, but it was amazing how we went from wide open grasslands and marshes, to banks covered in mossy trees and woods. Also, the banks of the “ditch” are lined with boulders everywhere so far. You look off into the woods along the banks of the Louisiana ICW and imagine some really strange person with very few teeth, wearing denim overalls and a straw hat, chewin’ on a piece of weed and gutting a wild pig, all to the music from the movie Deliverance. You imagine scenes from The Deer Hunter. And you just smile. This here is Louisiana. And it is very different. I’m really looking forward to exploring it and getting to know a little about it.

We had deep water (Ok more about water depths) most of the day. When you leave Taylor Bayou, you head east past the town of Port Arthur. PA is almost at the middle of the GICWW between the Florida Panhandle, and Brownsville, Texas. So, it is somewhat of an industrial hub. We must have passed 30 miles of nothing but refinery after refinery. Not only that, but it is heavy in barge and ship traffic as well. As a result, they keep this area dredged deep enough for ships drawing up to 15 meters (a little more than 45 feet) to get in and get out. A couple times on the run, we were slowed significantly by back ups. There is a place just east of Port Arthur called the “1000 foot cut” which is a narrow spot across the top of Sabine Lake (and when I say narrow, I mean less than 100 feet wide) which is pretty well marked. Getting across was not an issue. It ends, however, in a hair-pin turn at the east end that goes into another narrow area where, according to the NOAA charts, there are mooring buoys. These are small house-sized cans the barges can tie to when they need to stop for whatever reason. There is a small tug that runs around helping push them up to the cans so they can tie up. On this day, however, it seemed like it was raft-up day and on either side of this narrow hair-pin turn pass, the barges were three deep on each side, leaving enough space for one six-pack to squeeze through……and nothing else. So, it was great having the AIS to tell us if there was a barge coming in the opposite direction that our radar would never see until it was way too late, so we could forestall the passage. Obviously, we made it through, but, once again, the floor of the wheelhouse is littered with the remnants of what were once fingernails.




The 1000 Foot Cut was interesting as was the “Orange Intersection.” From Port Arthur all the way past the turnoff to Beaumont, TX., there is heavy barge traffic. More than 150 barges per day pass through this area. The Orange Intersection, however, brings traffic from 4 or 5 different directions into the Sabine River where they might be heading east, west, out to the Gulf, north to Orange or Beaumont, or to any one of the staging areas that live in a handful of loops just off the main canal. Sheer madness. I read an archived news story of how three vessels collided in this precise area. The incident involved a tanker and two barges. This was before the advent of AIS, but still…. Also every bridge you go under has these massive bumpers protecting the legs. The bumpers are rather beat to hell. It all suggests that, pushing hardware more than a football field long in a narrow channel in all sorts of weather, both day and night, is a hazardous activity. My little fiberglass ship would be squished like a Styrofoam cup under a steel-toed boot. No joke.

Finally, we made it to the Calcasieu (pronounced "kal-ka-shoe") River intersection and headed north up the river to Lake Charles.  We passed more refineries, but we also saw some beautiful parks along the banks of smaller lakes that come off the Calcasieu.  Nice wide and deep river.  As we started up the river, we could see the massive L'Auberge Du Lac Casino and resort - it's a 27 story monstrosity (the tallest building between Houston and New Orleans.  It sits on a point jutting out into the river at the intersection of the Calcasieu and Contraband Bayou.  There is a 36 hole golf affair, casinos, restaurants, shopping, pools, spas, etc.  We passed the Citgo refinery, the Exxon Refinery, a Venoco refinery, and then passed under the I-210 bridge before turning right into the channel that leads to Lake Charles.  It's not a terribly big lake, but it is lined with nice homes and there is a downtown waterfront redevelopment that looks shiney and new.  Couldn't have asked for nicer weather.

We’re going to start exploring Lake Charles so I’ll have more to talk about soon. Thanks for all the great feedback. I appreciate the fact that there are a lot of folks reading this dribble, and enjoying it. So I’ll just keep on putting it out for as long as there are folks enjoying it. For us, the adventure keeps getting more interesting and fun.

Be well, All.