The Wreck of the WAKARELU
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- Annuitants & Former ExPats
Author: Elmer Hartley
Released 29 August 2005
In 1982, Elmer and Lucille Hartley entered their boat, the WAKARELU, a 30 foot wooden ketch, in a Gulf of Mexico sailboat cruise that was sponsored by the Rockport Sailing Club. The cruise was from Port Aransas, Texas to Port Isabelle, Texas and back. In what turned out to be a harrowing adventure, severe winds coupled with a mysterious mechanical problem swept the boat ashore wrecking the boat but delivering the Hartley's to safety. Elmer Hartley tells the story of The Wreck of the WAKARELU.
The cruise started early one morning. The winds were forecasted to be 10-15 miles per hour from the Southeast, ideal sailing conditions for the Gulf of Mexico and this 120 mile overnight sail. If we had known that this would turn out to be a bad weather forecast and that winds would increase to gale force conditions, we would never have made the decision to go outside in the Gulf and to sail to Port Isabelle. We would have sailed the safer route, taking the protected inside ICW passage from Rockport to Port Isabelle. This is what the smaller sail boats did. Two other boats that sailed in the Gulf were also blown onto the Texas shore.
The sailing condition deteriorated as the day went on. The winds eventually changed direction and increased, so that by the afternoon the winds were blowing 30-35 mph and from the Northeast. The seas had increased to 8-10 feet by the time we arrived at the Port Isabelle jetties. This was approximately 0200 hours in the morning and it was plenty dark.
As we arrived at the jetties, I started the boat's diesel in order to power into and enter the channel, and took down the sails. For about 5 minutes we had power to the boat's propeller. All of a sudden, we lost power but the engine was running. I immediately opened the engine-room hatch and could see the propeller shaft was turning all the way to the stern tube. I surmised that either the propeller key had been sheared, the propeller shaft had parted by the propeller, or the propeller or blades were missing. The seas were now a good 8 feet in this shallow water, with the winds gusting to 40 or so miles per hour. The reefed sails were then hoisted and we headed out into the safer waters of the Gulf and away from the Texas shore.
However, I noticed that I could not control the boat and had no steerage. We were caught on something, a fish net perhaps, something that had done the damage. With no headway or control, the seas and current took the boat and us to the near Texas shore. As we drifted and approached the shore and the huge breaking surf waters, I threw out both anchors. They would not catch. The bottom probably was like concrete because of the many years of heavy surf pounding on it. The boat drifted into the breaking surf, into shallow water, grounded, rolled over on its port side and started filling with sand and water from the rolling surf.
This was approximately 0530 hours and at daybreak. Lucille and I "abandoned ship", jumped overboard and reluctantly walked through the surf to the beach. We landed about 1/2 mile north of the Rio Grande River, the border between Mexico and the U.S.
We shall never know what would have happened if we had beached on the Mexican Coast. We would probably still be completing papers to get both boat and us out of Mexico.
Members of the Port Isabelle Yacht Club later assisted us in salvaging some of the boats gear and personal effects. We stayed at a yacht club member's home about 15 miles from the shipwreck until daughter Karen drove from Rockport to take us home.
We never did determine what caused the loss of power and the accident. This was basically due to the trauma at the time. For some reason, we never returned to the boat. We settled with the insurance company and the wooden boat was salvaged by them and sold to a young couple that lived in the Port Isabelle area. They renovated it to it's original condition. We saw it in a marina at a later date, but were never able to make contact with the new owners. We left notes at the boat and their house but to no avail. We thought perhaps they could inform us as to what caused the loss of power.