17 November – Gulf of Mexico
The New Orleans anchors in the bay outside Corpus Christi in the early afternoon…..and just sits. We are going nowhere.
Scuttlebutt in the galley has it that the winch is broken, we cannot pull the anchor back up, and we are marooned for who knows how long until the winch can be fixed. The captain, on the other hand, says that the pilot is delayed and we don’t know when he or she will arrive.
The pilot shows up around 8 pm to start the long process (3 to 4 hours) of guiding us into port. Those of us in the know just decide to go to bed.
18 and 19 November –
We arrive in the wee small hours of the morning in the port area of Corpus Christi. We are parked under the bridge near the downtown area, and from the pilot deck, we can see that very American landscape feature – a baseball field.
Henry’s sister Ann and her husband Jerry arrive at the port gate at 9 am; due to a series of administrative snafus and mis-direction, disembarkation is delayed for hours.
We are finally released around 1 pm, and spend a nice day and evening catching up with Ann and Jerry.
Unfortunately, our visit is shorter than anticipated. As noted, we arrived a day late due to delay in getting a pilot to guide the ship in. Apparently, however, things have fallen into place such that we will be able to leave Sunday afternoon instead of Monday.
After an expedited return to the ship, it does not in fact leave at 5 pm as planned; instead it is after 8 pm. No matter how much experience we have gained with cargo ship travel, we still just can’t fully appreciate that delay is the order of the day; promptness would be an anomaly.
Around the World Again 