Is Texas a good place to cruise/liveaboard?

[HighTemp]

Originally Posted by joelhemington

I too am looking hard at that area as I'm sick of all the snow flakes and Texas seems like a place where people mind their own damned business.

LOL..... Likely to feel a lot like home then as many of those "Snow Flakes" have already migrated here. Looks like a majority of them have moved to Austin, but we have some here as well.

[Phantom Jim]

We have cruised our Pearson 365 ketch out of Clear Lake on Galveston Bay since 2001. The coast line is flat, featureless and relatively wild. Between the large bays where the boating population is in marinas, there is little support. The Bays are shallow, 8ish to 12ish feet in the deeper areas. There is only one deep water anchorage on Galveston Island, Offat's Bayou that is a good heavy weather anchorage for all wind directions.

Boats with 5 feet of draft or more are going to be limited in anchoring possibilities. We laugh about the adage that there are 40 anchorages per mile in Maine while we have 40 miles between anchorages in Texas.

South of Corpus Christi, which is reported to not allow live-aboards in their marinas, the Laguna Madre is just a shallow basin behind a barrier island. Port Isabel has good yacht amenities.

We like cruising Texas waters but we also like the coastal waters between Louisiana and Tampa. The Mississippi sound and the ICWW between
Mobile Bay and Pensacola are particularly lovely.

[rmlarson1098]

Originally Posted by DMF Sailing

Hi Folks,

Recently, I read about how Corpus Christi is a great place to live aboard. Looks really inexpensive compared to New England.

I'm an experienced cruiser who likes to gunkhole around, trying to decide where I'm going to live aboard when I cut loose in a year or two.

I have a few places in mind, including my home cruising grounds here in New England.

Who's cruised/lived aboard in Texas? Looking for informed opinions.

Any snags?

A glance at the NOAA 11300 and its subsidiaries suggests that there are lots of places a keel boat with a not-too-deep draft can go along that coast, to say nothing of access to Central and South America.

Looks like the oil derricks are more of a problem north and east of Galveston. I guess you go around them to get to Lousiana and Fla.

What are the ports like? How do people relate to cruisers? Are those bays really as cool and sailexplorable as they look on charts?

I'm looking for anecdotes, thread drift, recipes, supercilious put-downs, and expressions of frustration that the poll doesn't match the OP.

And anything else lighthearted. Even Kiel puns.

(And yes, that line in choice 3 was a bumper sticker I saw in Houston during the 1972 oil crisis. I'm not looking for a U.S. politics argument, but i accept that this may devolve into one.)

Texas is fine. And they welcome cruisers, at least compared to the snobs and hi-brows in Florida. Water isn't so pretty, and you will need aircon in the summer unless you are very hardy. We made TX our domicile for several years while sailing (and RVing) and they welcome that, too.
And Isla Mujeres is just a week (+-) away!

[jmschmidt]

That's a classic.

“If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.”
General Philip Henry Sheridan

Maybe this was a long time ago. Gen. Sheridan was call “Little Phil” by Abraham Lincoln and others who knew him back in the day.

[phoenixone]

Admittedly, dated info, had a sailboat (5 foot draft, no issue) docked in Aransas Pass for a year (1996). Why there? Long haul from CC to gulf or ICW. Sailing is ok (compared to not sailing at all), long way between inlets. Sailing/anchoring the ICW was no issue...but as has been mentioned remote area.

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by DMF Sailing

What's it like sailing with all those rigs? It looks like some of them are submerged...

You gotta pay attention. Yes, there are submerted obstacles, semi-submerged obstacles, supply ship mooring bouys the size of many cruising boats, and LOTS of related commercial traffic.

One of my most heart stopping moments sailing in the oil patch was sailing past about an 8" diameter pipe roughly cut off just above the surface on a dark night. I just caught a glimpse of its silouhete as we passed it just a few feet abeam. A few feet to starboard and it would have been a very different night!

Ive also been sailing thru the middle of a cluster of platforms at night, all apparently power by the same generator when the generator when the generator failed and the whole cluster went dark.

Siesmic vessels are one the more entertaining commercial vessels you may encounter in the oil patch...they tow miles (literally) of siesmic survey gear.

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by Sand crab

I windsurfed in CC decades ago. I think it gets decent reliable winds at certain times of the year and that is why we went. ....

Yes, CC is a great bay for day sailing, but its a long haul to any other "cruising" areas on the Texas coast.

I used to keep a boat there. We enjoyed the bay and the town, but not the long haul to get to mostly mediocre destinations.

[belizesailor]

Originally Posted by oleman

I was thinking of living out of Palacios, perfect bay and no commercial traffic in the area. BUT this is the home port for most of the commercial fishing fleet on the Texas Gulf. Well, the moving to the Gulf has not worked out but only because my Life is not controlled by my wants! Biggest down side in my mind is the JULY - OCTOBER heat and the spring storms but either is manageable.

Oh yeah the heat....only a few degrees warmer than hell and many times more humid!

If you plan to live aboard in Texas, AirCon is not a luxury...it is life support!

When we planned to temporary live aboard in Texas just prior to going cruising we had full AirCon installed, would not have been feasible without it.

[belizesailor]

A Texas gotcha to be aware of is State Registration and related taxes. When I was there, if your non-TX registered boat was in State more than 90 days then you were required to register AND pay Sales Tax if you could not prove you had paid it elsewhere.

That was a long time ago so check on current laws.

[Montanan]

I may be biased but:

“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans”

― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

[sailjumanji]

Lots of input here from some people that don't have a clue.

Offshore oil platforms don't move, unless they are being removed completely. Louisiana coastline has a lot more offshore platforms than Texas.

Submerged wells in deep water are wellheads sitting on the seafloor. Even shrimpers don't snag them.

Corpus Christi and Port Aransas muni marinas both allow liveaboards, but limit the number. I think the same is true for Rockport/Fulton. Island Moorings marina in Port Aransas doesn't allow liveaboard.

If you haven't seen water in Port Aransas area, it is markedly clearer and more green compared to Galveston. We are not that far from South Padre which is a well known beach resort area. The Mississippi River is a long way from here and not a factor.

I am not aware of any mooring fields on Texas coast or bays,, nor are there municipal controlled anchor fields. I also don't remember seeing a dedicated dinghy dock anywhere, but with no dedicated anchor or mooring fields I guess that makes sense.

It does get hot here in the summer. But generally we also sail year round. And we get hurricanes, but usually get advanced notice of them coming.

Austin is more like California than Texas. It's also not on the coast, so shouldn't be an issue.

If you're like us and appreciate an annual trek to the Bahamas, it's a long run from here just to get to the east coast of Florida to stage up. Even of you cut across the Gulf.

[sailjumanji]

Oh, and having made the run several times along the Louisiana and Texas coast, a lot of the obstacles on the charts are not present now. Well platforms that have been removed, still show up on the map. Ditto for subsea wellheads that are not a surface obstruction. I think even dry hole wells that were drilled but never completed are shown on the map. OTOH, some platforms are new enough to not be on charts yet. Typically they are lighted. Just use your radar and keep watch, and you will be fine. We never go as far out as the dedicated shipping lanes.

[Phantom Jim]

Texas does not seem to have a roving group of cruisers moving from anchorage to anchorage as we have seen in the Bahamas, Virgin Islands, Maine, and etc. There will be flotilla and gatherings sponsored by clubs and other organizations but no groups of individual boats. These are an event that does its thing and all go back to their respective marinas. There are no mooring fields in Texas that we are aware of.

Apart from the Offat's Bayou anchorage in Galveston, we have only had a handful of instances where a boat anchored where we were anchored. All of these instances were late in the evening and the boats departed early the next morning. It appeared that staying a few days in a particular anchorage here is not commonly done.

Our assumption is that conditions are not conducive to live aboard at anchor/mooring ball existence, therefore the facilities to serve these boats have not developed. This may be the case for the entire Gulf Coast through Pensacola.

[Cayuse51]

One other thing to remember is how hard it is to leave the Texas coast once you get here. The prevailing winds blow from the southeast and create a very uncomfortable wave pattern. Key West is about 800 miles from Galveston, all upwind bashing into those uncomfortable waves. The other option is to motor around the ICW to Pensacola, if your boat draft allows it. That takes weeks. Or you can try to time a frontal passage in the spring or fall to catch favorable winds for a couple of days. I have done all of these, other than the ICW, and none of them work particularly well. I have seen several cruising dreams ruined trying to leave Texas for Florida. If your plan is to spend winters in the Bahamas or Belize, you might consider keeping the boat farther east.

[DMF Sailing]

OP here. Lots of great answers, and I appreciate them all.

So far "little snow" and "lonely anchorages" are the two things that appeal to me most. I stay away from crowds.

Though "need A.C." and "no facilities" isn't a promising combo.

Seems like those southeasterlies mentioned by Cayuse are going to pose a similar problem for heading down the Mexican coast toward Cancun, etc.

Does anyone know that coast?

df

PS: Montanan, if Montana were on the coast I'd move there at the drop of a hat.

(Pictured: one's a crowd; sNOw thank you!)