So there we were, finally on our way. Getting out of the marina was tricky, due to sunken boats and random lines strung across the bayou where boats had floated from one side to the other during Katrina. We bent one safety stanchion a bit, but we made it. Frank contacted the Bayou Bonfouca bridge operator on the radio, and - much to the girls' excitement - the bridge swung open so we could pass.
Motoring down the bayou was a strange mix of excitement and sadness. We saw a number of sunken barges and other boats, and the homes along the channel are in pretty bad shape. We saw the "usual" downed trees and crunched roofs but also extensive evidence of flood damage, with reeds and mud lines as much as 12 feet above the usual waterline. Numerous little floating islands of grass were everywhere, so we inched our way along, never quite sure if one of them might turn out to be a genuine shallow spot in the bayou.
We hadn't gone very far at all when the engine-temperature alarm began to sound. Our initial hope that it was a short in the alarm itself died quickly, so we picked a wide spot in the bayou and dropped the anchor. As I've said previously, it was at least a lovely spot.
Bayou Bonfouca twists and turns its way out to Lake Pontchartrain, with signs of human habitation dwindling as you get closer to the lake and signs of wildlife increasing proportionally. Fish jump constantly, and a stunning array of birds go about their feathered business. We saw pelicans, egrets, herons, eagles, gulls, and a host of smaller birds, who dove and swooped and fished and rode the (ever increasing) air currents all around us. Smiley the gator was a regular visitor, and that snake once, and we soon came to realize that a goatlike mewling I'd been hearing belonged to a furry creature we occasionally saw swimming around off in the distance. Frank thinks he may have been one of Louisiana's famous Rodents of Unusual Size, the nutria.
Steady breezes and wild neighbors notwithstanding, it didn't take many days before we were all feeling pretty restless. Between post-hurricane pollution and the less friendly residents of the bayou, we didn't dare swim, so rides in the dinghy provided our only real form of recreation. Other than that, we read and wrote and read some more. Normally, "reading and writing and reading some more" would describe my ideal vacation, but we had all been psyched up for a bit more adventure than that.
Then we got it. Rita took aim at the Gulf Coast and left us nervous that she would head right for us while we sat there with a disabled engine. But the part came in, and Frank was able to quickly install the new water pump. Hurray! We ran the engine for a while, just to be sure our problem was solved. About the time we relaxed and quit listening for it, the alarm sounded again. Alas! The air turned blue for a while.
Nevertheless, our engine was at least back together now, so we could use it if we had to, to reset the anchor or even limp back to port.
Meanwhile, Rita was deciding which part of Texas she would clobber. We listened religiously to the updates from the National Weather Center, and they *said* Slidell would only be in the tropical storm watch area (as opposed to the tropical storm warning area west of Lake Pontchartrain). So we stayed put.
The day before landfall, the skies clouded over. Relief! It was almost like being back home in the Pacific Northwest, except for little things like gators and temperatures in the 90s. We enjoyed our respite from hot rays anyway, and we really enjoyed the wind and resultant lack of bugs. That squall blew through, bringing excitement and confidence that Rita would be purely fun.
By about midnight, my confidence was in the toilet. Rita - and the tropical storm warning area - had shifted east, and the winds kept getting stronger. With the storm surge pouring into the lake and bayous, we ended up with wind and waves opposing, causing the Zombie Princess to do this rolling, swinging dance at the end of her anchor lines that did *not* agree with my stomach. With steady winds of ~30 knots and gusts a good bit more than that, I became extremely paranoid about the anchor's holding ability. Every time the boat swung hard - think Crack the Whip - I was compelled to pop my head out a hatch and check our position relative to shore. Add that to my need to listen to the weather report every couple of hours, and you can imagine the quality of my sleep that night.
I counted down the minutes til morning, when I was just SURE things would ease up. Rita would make landfall and everything would stop. Right? Wrong. By afternoon, Rita was approaching Shreveport as a mere tropical storm, but we were still rocking and rolling in 30-knot winds. Remind me never to sit in the southeastern quadrant of a hurricane again, okay? The only bright side was that, by that time, I had begun to believe in our anchor. (Kudos to Cap'n Franko for feeling that the boat's standard anchor wasn't weighty enough and purchasing a larger one!)
I should describe the storm surge, because it was quite impressive. At one edge of the bend in the bayou where we were anchored, there is a tall white pole that probably means something to the boaters around here (and maybe even to Frank, I didn't ask). It became my depth gauge. In normal conditions, about six feet of pole show above the water. By dawn on Saturday, there were about three inches showing. The marshland on both sides of the bayou was drowned, with only a two-foot band of grasses marking the usual banks. The bayou had in effect become one with Lake Pontchartrain.
Oh, the birds loved it! The pelicans, who tend to hang out more toward the lake, came in close to ride the wind and fish just off our stern. I guess the fishing is good after a storm, because they were quite successful. And the gulls seemed to be having a field day in the recently "annexed" marshlands, no doubt finding all sorts of delectable critters that had been flooded out of their homes.
We got very little rain. Well, we got about four inches of rain, but most of that came in a couple of squalls. Used to northwest storms, I had expected the rain to be constant. No complaints that it wasn't!!
I slept better Saturday night, even though the wind hadn't let up at all. Sunday morning, the floodwaters started receding. This left us worried about being left aground - the south winds had lined us up alongside the reemerging bank - so we *gently* fired up the engine and weighed anchor. Weighing anchor in a very strong headwind when you're afraid to push the engine above 1200 RPMs is a tricky proposition! But my muscles were up to the task. I am the KreweQueen, after all.
So, we inched our way back up Bayou Bonfouca, intending to return to our little marina and find a mechanic. We made it about a third of the way when the temperature alarm went off again. In one of those mad scrambles that anyone who has ever been sailing will be able to relate to, Frank killed the engine while I jumped in the dinghy and got it going. The Grave Tender earned her name then, providing power while Frank provided steering aboard the ZP. The girls were dispatched to find a hat and squirt bottle for their suddenly sun-baked mother. And then we had about an hour of put-putting up the bayou.
The wind was significantly less the closer we got to town. I can't regret being away from there during the storm, though. All those signs of flood damage we'd seen on the way out were doubled on the way back in, and I believe there were a few additional sunken boats. I'm glad we were out there away from the crowd and floating debris.
When we got to the Bayou Bonfouca bridge, we discovered that the operator was unable to open it until an electrician came out to certify that the works were still workable after their Rita-dunking. With limited choices, we tied up at the submerged gas dock adjacent to the bridge. The dock and the little store there have been closed since Katrina, but it looked really sad now. The dock itself was under at least two feet of water, and the bayou extended right up to the front door of the store. (It wasn't until the waters receded that I realized the area between dock and store was actually a lawn.) I was nervous about being tied up there, because the owners clearly wouldn't want anyone poking around, but we figured it would be all right due to our disabled engine and as long as we stayed on the boat.
Marjie and I took the dinghy under the bridge, parked it at "our" marina, and then walked across the road to visit the bridge operator. He's a big, bearded guy with stories to tell and a need for company. Katrina had affected him in a somewhat unusual way: his new dentures weren't fitting properly and his dentist wasn't back in business yet. Toothless or not, he was able to help us with a time estimate on the bridge electrician (Monday or Tuesday) and a battered phone book that provided numbers for taxicabs and diesel mechanics. His air-conditioned office was pretty nice, too.
Back on the ZP, we used the satellite phone to call a cab. We rode out to Lacombe to retrieve our van, entertained along the way by the Saints game on the radio and the cab driver's post-hurricane philosophy. He also shared an unwelcome superstition: "These things come in three's, ya know."
We have our van back. I don't know if I can effectively describe the joy that brought us. Trapped in Slidell, bridge not working, engine possibly in need of multi-thousand-dollar repairs, but at least we had our car!!! We are true Americans.
Our first stop was Wendy's. That sounds pathetic, but you might understand when I tell you that the highlight of our meal was cold drinks with ICE CUBES.
After we'd made some pre-arrangements with Country, the caretaker/manager of the boatyard, a bit of grocery shopping rounded out our first day back in Slidell. We bought ice there, too, so we could transfer all of the food from the boat refrigerator into our cooler (which was in the van). That left us battery power for fans and lights and other luxuries, so our night at the gas dock was fairly pleasant.
Monday morning, I resigned myself to the near certainty that we wouldn't get through the bridge that day and resolved to do just whatever I wanted. Top of the list was a shower, and I was about halfway through shaving my legs when our social life kicked in. The owner of the gas dock showed up and in a quite friendly fashion came over to see who we were. Picture me sitting on the stern, razor in hand, wearing my never-worn-in-public bikini, as this smiling stranger strolls up to the boat. Oh, it's funny now, and I can just hear you all laughing at my predicament, but at the time I was disgruntled to say the least.
Meanwhile, noises and test runs from the bridge let us know that the electrician was there. Of course! If I had waited anxiously for him all day, he wouldn't have come until Tuesday.
Five minutes later, just when I'd gotten back to my shower, deluding myself that I now had a modicum of privacy, a guy on a boat across the way got on his PA to tell us unnecessarily that the bridge was working, incidentally informing us that he was much more aware of us than we were of him.
Plans for puttering set aside, we passed through the bridge and returned to the marina. We immediately set out for Covington in truly horrible traffic - an unexpected aftereffect of a major hurricane is that everybody in town in using the same few roads to get to the same few places - to the parts place to purchase a new thermostat. That was our last hope for an inexpensive solution to our overheating problem until a guy there suggested taking a look at the exhaust mixing elbow, explaining that they are often clogged in older engines. To make a long story short, that turned out to be our problem. We had a repair guy out today to get that sucker off. It took him some monster pipe wrenches, a couple of hours, a whole lot of effort, and a couple of badly banged knuckles to do it, so we know calling him was the right thing to do, and boy, was that elbow gunked up. It wasn't a cheap fix exactly, but it was a whole lot less than replacing the head gasket would have been!
So. We have a working engine and very little to do to get ready to leave again. We're aiming for Friday morning. Keep your fingers crossed that Katrina, Rita, and a mixing elbow were the three crises that we had to deal with before we could cruise!
