Sitting down at breakfast on our departure day, we realized the magnitude of that wind. A rather eerie feeling. Locating the needed charts for continuing our voyage proved to be an exercise in futility. We learned that the gulf is not an area heavily frequented by cruisers, which posed a problem when trying to obtain charts beyond a 30-mile radius of wherever we were. The gulf creates warm, moist air flowing northward from spring to fall, usually bringing with it warm temperatures and rain, as well as mild winters, which is pretty much what we experienced.
Tides here occur mostly twice daily and are easily affected by winds and pressure.
This was our initial introduction to cruising in shallow waters, so our three-foot draft was very much appreciated. Most of our runs were between 40 and 60 nautical miles, an easy day of cruising at an economical 7.5 knots. We encountered our first set of locks between Matagorda Bay and Narrows, Texas. As we were unable to raise the lock tender on the VHF and we were definitely inexperienced at this, we welcomed being able to follow a tow through the three sets of locks. This is not a practice we prefer in unknown waters.