Port Mansfield

We left Thursday morning and had no problem crossing Corpus Christi Bay...it was like a lake! We made 40 whole miles south to Baffin Bay and anchored there for the night, with extra chain out since the weather was supposed to get nasty. Well, it certainly did! The wind shifted to the North and our anchor failed at about 2 am and we woke up on a hard shoal. Normally, we could just pull ourselves off by bringing the anchor in, but the windlass failed, too. There was a lot of praying going on, believe me, but thank GOD and Jason, we were towed off about dawn and went on down the waterway with no apparent harm done. It was a LONG cold day, but it was a downwind motor sail and we averaged 6.5 knots for the 50 miles to Port Mansfield. Manny on Corazon (heart) Frisbee (after his boxer) heard us on the VHF radio at Baffin Bay and called to tell us of a cheap dock in Port Mansfield that has no power or water, for $35/night. He was there to catch our lines when we pulled in about 4 pm. What a nice guy! He's on a 22' cat boat (gaff-rigged sailboat) and on his way from Galvaston Bay to Port Isabel for the winter. Daren and I went to dinner next door, walked the dogs, and were in bed by 6 pm!
This morning, we decided we'd really like to have electricity for our little heater, so we called the City Marina and found that their daily rate is $25/day and their monthly rate is $125! Since we need to wait on weather and for a new windlass and anchor, we signed up for the month, although we'll only stay a week before heading on down to Port Isabel. Manny came over this afternoon and showed us some great spots to anchor there. One's right on South Padre Island, but not accessible by car, so we can run the dogs on soft sand beaches instead of that nasty oyster shell that cut up Pete's feet the other day near Corpus Christi Bay. He's still limping a bit, poor guy!
Port Mansfield turns out to be a really small town of about 300 people! There's only one church here, and we're going to check it out tomorrow. It's a very friendly and walkable place, but there's not even a grocery store here...just a bait shop with chips and candy bars! We did find a great little waterfront restaurant with a good salad bar and a big screen TV for watching tomorrow's football game featuring Tim Tebow's team.