[Paddlewise] La Costa Del Golfo

Arthur Hebert and Larry Koenig have finished the first and biggest chunk


of the La Costa Del Golfo paddle trip.  After 4 1/2 months and 2200


nautical miles of paddling along the Gulf of Mexico coast from Louisiana


to Isla Mujeres at the easternmost tip of Mexico we have taken a break,


-to commence again in late September or thereabouts.  





The timing is good.  The Gulf has been filled with hurricanes and


tropical storms since the day we landed on the “Isle of Women”.  In fact


the Capitania del Puerto (harbor master) at Isla met us on the beach


when we landed, grabbed our boats, and threatened that the policia would


jail us because we had landed when the harbor was officially closed.


Tropical Storm Bill had commenced in the northern Caribbean that day and


its winds and waves forced the closure of the harbor.  We knew it was


nasty weather and did not want to be out in it anymore, but we didn’t


know (and should have known) the Island was off limits. By the next


morning all was settled amicably.


 


It was a remarkable bit of a trip, (the preceding 2200 miles that is).


We had previously paddled the northern gulf coast: Louisiana,


Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida panhandle, and found that


delightful - but had never ventured far into Texas or Mexico.  Nor did


we imagine exactly how difficult it would be.  





We chose to paddle around the Gulf of Mexico counterclockwise mainly to


facilitate our entry into Cuba. The US would not appreciate us crossing


from Florida to Cuba, so we initially planned to paddle over from


Mexico. What that forced us to do, unfortunately, was to buck continuous


headwinds for hundreds of miles in southern Texas, northern Mexico and


along the Yucatan peninsula.  For weeks we just paddled hard but only


made good a disheartening 1 – 1½ MPH.  This put us significantly behind


schedule so that when, later, we were opposed by the strong trade winds


of the northern Yucatan we had no choice but to get on the water at 2-3


am in order to get in 6-8 hours of paddling before the east winds maxed


out in mid morning.  We were able to safely paddle at night along the


northern Yucatan because extensive shallows near shore dampened the


waves to naught. 





So, it was a hard paddle.  But, it was a good one.





We would still like to paddle Cuba, when possible some day, but it is no


longer part of the plan for this expedition.  We were not sufficiently


comfortable with the strength of the Voyager rig as we knew it during La


Costa Del Golfo so far.  The cross poles broke in medium surf one day in


northern Mexico after we had added grafted on pole sections to lengthen


them and give us more paddling space between the two Greenlander Pros.


That pole failure left us uncomfortable with the possibility of failure


of the rig; and, equipment failure somewhere in the 300 plus mile gap


between Mexico and Florida was not an option.  Nigel Dennis’ Voyager rig


and its ability to help paddlers in two different boats use a tail wind


and still stay together was very helpful in the first few weeks of the


expedition but after those first few weeks we never again had a wind


going our way.





In the Florida Keys later this year we will again take it up and paddle


the remnant of the gulf coast in a couple of segments - up the Florida


peninsula and over and back to Louisiana where we started this past


February.





The New Orleans newspaper published an article last week which is the


only publication re La Costa Del Golfo we have seen since we completed


this first chunk of the expedition.  A link to that article is included


because we think Bob Marshall, its author, did a great job of explaining


what we were up against.





 


http://www.nola.com/sports/t-p/index.ssf?/base/sports-3/1058338578109580


.xml. 





See www.lascostadelgolfo.com for a few pics of the trip so far and the


daily blurbs Janell, (Larry's wife), generated after talking to us


nightly. 





Stay tuned for further updates.





Larry Koenig and Arthur Hebert








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