A Private Gulf of Mexico Yacht Cruise That Went Very Wrong
by Pat
(Houston, TX)
Not our fishkill but one in the same location nostalgia's sake!
Our family won a three day cruise on the Gulf Of Mexico that seemed like a dream come true....
The Gulf Cruise was a raffle prize from a fund-raiser that the director of my children's preschool had attended with us since she worked with that charity. The cruise was for four people, so.... my two daughters and I invited her to go along with us. My daughters were four and five and a half at the time. Rita (not her real name) and I were adults and then some.
The Gulf Cruise was on a private yacht, a very nice one. For this story, we will call it the "Calamity Jane." The skipper and his wife were the only crew, and the boat had four cabins. We had two, they had one, and a young couple on their honeymoon had the other. We were to sail to New Orleans and back over the not quite four day trip with three nights "at sea."
It wasn't super fancy, but all we had to do was enjoy it. Our cabins had a common door that could be unlatched, so we put the kids in one and ourselves in the other. That wouldn't last...
We set out and about 100 miles into the Gulf, something fouled a prop and we stopped dead on the water. The skipper tried things with the engine, but no go and eventually he put on scuba gear to see for himself what was wrong. He found that some type of plastic sheeting was tangled up in the props, but as fate would have it, he hadn't brought enough air in his tanks to stay under long enough to untangle it....so, He had to radio for help as we bobbed up and down in the middle of nowhere with nothing to see but water.... then, we got caught in a small thunderstorm that otherwise we would have out run long ago.
The saga continues...
My younger child, who never gets seasick, did, and spent a lot of time hanging over a bucket, part of it on deck in the rain, because work on the engine had filled the cabins and galley with nasty diesel fumes and we had had splitting headaches. The weather also delayed the repairs, but eventually some service the captain radioed came and fixed the engine.
New Orleans... finally...
We did make it to New Orleans and spent most of a day sightseeing and loved it. But at what a price, because that night we all suffered from food poisoning from something we had eaten... then we fought each other to use the "heads." Weak as kittens the next day, we were barely able to look forward to the nice meals the skipper's wife cooked as we sailed to an area where we were supposed to dolphin watch, but the stove broke anyway, so it would not have made much difference... so we had nothing but cold food.
What Next?
Then we sailed into an awful fish kill patch floating and stinking on the surface with some nasty looking seaweed type stuff. Add that to delicate tummies from the food poisoning and we were ruined for the dolphin watch, which naturally only turned up three of them. Between being sick and caught in a storm, both kids had moved in with the adults to be comforted and we were sharing rather cramped bunks with miserable children.
Remember the newlyweds?...
The poor newlyweds had spent most of their time in their cabin, not for what you might think billing and cooing, but because both of them were horribly seasick. When they finally seemed OK to be up on deck enjoying the sea and the dolphins, we almost immediately sailed into the dead fish and they turned green and retreated to their cabin, not to be seen until we docked.
Good to be back home?...
The final joy was being caught coming into the docks right next a garbage scow with a full load. By then it was so awful we were laughing because we were cried out. My older daughter pointed out a seagull on the scow who seemed to be vomiting which seemed sort of appropriate. We howled again when the captain helped us ashore and said he hoped we'd enjoyed our "lovely cruise" and would come again soon, and we laughed the whole drive home from Galveston to Houston remembering all the crazy things that happened.
At least the price was right since it all came from a $5 charity raffle ticket! If for some reason you are strange enough to want to try the "Calamity Jane" it's not going to happen. She was one of the boats lost in hurricane Alicia. I'm still deciding whether that was a good or bad thing.
Private yacht cruises can be very special ways to spend family vacations, but yours is likely to go better than ours, or at least I hope so!
