On a warm midday in November, I cast ARR & ARR’s lines off from the dock at Goose Island State Park and rowed into the fickle breeze coming down the double row of low pilings marking the channel to Aransas Bay on the south-central Texas coast. The channel was only 100′ wide, too narrow to beat to weather in the light air with a balanced lug—at least for me—especially with fishermen or hunters speeding back to the park’s ramp in their high-powered skiffs and airboats. Instead, I rowed across the shallows between the channel and the park’s 800′ fishing pier.

Photographs by the author

After a 3-hour drive from my home in Austin, I left my car and trailer at a campsite at Goose Island State Park while I explored the bays. The landscape of the Texas Coastal Bend is flat with sand and shell beaches, brackish marshes, and bay depths of only 10′ to 15′. While mild conditions are the norm in early November, northers can blow through and drop temperatures 20 or 30 degrees in only minutes and build up a steep chop. I was fortunate to have five straight days ahead with afternoon highs near 80, overnight lows in the 60s, mostly clear skies, and winds rarely over 15 knots.

Near the steps that lead down from the pier into the water, two anglers in waders cast lines in long arcs. A kayak fisherman floating just past the end of the pier reeled in a slack line little by little. He paid no attention to me as I rowed past him on the side of his kayak opposite his fishing line, but a man and a boy standing on the end of the pier waved to me. I returned a wave and rowed another 1/4 mile into Aransas Bay. The bay was crinkled by wavelets in the light air. I had only 5 miles to go that afternoon, so I took my time stowing the oars, fenders, and dock lines before raising the sail.

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