Getting from here to there

Much like going somewhere in your vehicle, sailing has approved lanes of travel.  And they are referred to with such phrases as channel, roads and freeway.  A channel is a specific area that is deemed safe for boat travel, and is typically maintained for that travel by dredging.  Often channels occur in areas that may be, too shallow and have been made deeper by the dredging.  For example, Galveston Bay is   a relatively shallow bay, but right through the middle of the bay is the Houston Ship Channel.  The depth of the channel is maintained at about 40 feet.  This is for the big ships to bring cargo into the Houston Port.  I say big ships, but not the massive ships.  Those must wait out in the Gulf of Mexico.  

Roads can be places where multiple channels meet.  One of the busiest seaway roads in the US is Bolivar roads, just outside of Galveston Texas.  At Bolivar Roads, the Texas City channel, the Houston Ship Channel and the Inter-coastal Waterway all intersect.  So you have big ships, long barges being pushed by towboats, shrimpers, pleasure craft, and for an added bonus, the ferry between Galveston and Bolivar trudging to and fro.  It is one of the busiest water crossings in the US.  Freeways are pretty much like vehicle freeways, vehicles moving about freely, avoiding one another.  It is not a place to anchor.  Of particular importance in the Gulf of Mexico is that you are not allowed to plant oil or gas rigs in the freeway.  Think of building a skyscraper in the middle of the interstate.  Not a good thing.  

One evening on a Gulf of Mexico crossing from Galveston to Port Aransas (9 hours by car - 42 hours by sailboat), my friend and I were on evening watch.  She was at the helm, I was on watch.  The moon was full.  The silence was only interrupted by the lapping of the waves against the boat and the occasional and infrequent clanking of a mark.  It was perhaps as quiet as you can imagine the earth being.  And as I scanned the horizon, and the surface of the water, as my job on watch was to do, off our port side probably at least 5 miles away was the silhouette of a massive ship.  Silently gliding parallel to us.  It was a hauntingly beautiful moment, one that revealed the beauty of nature and the thankfulness of technology which would have alerted us to her presence, had she been any closer. 

It was a strangely thin place.