A new tour boat has docked at Harrison’s Landing at the Corpus Christi Marina, sailing into Corpus Christi Bay every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. At 74 feet long, the Texas Tease can hold up to 60 passengers for two-hour tours that can travel 50 miles off the shoreline. It will also soon be serving catered meals and alcoholic beverages on dinner and sunset cruises. Until then, it sells snacks, water, soft drinks, and setups on its two-a-night cruises, three days a week.
“We’re excited to finally get underway,” said Lynn Kates, CEO of Harrison’s Landing. “We’ve had the boat for a year but couldn’t do what we wanted with it because Hurricane Harvey hit right after we bought it.”
Necessary work on the boat happened this spring, enabling it to take on paying customers in July. After Christmas this year, the Tease will get a new exterior paint job with further upgrades both inside and out.
A double-decker boat, the Tease is air-conditioned on the lower deck, a vast difference from its sister tour boat, the open-air Japonica, which can only travel up to 1 mile from shore.
The Japonica is a 35-capacity boat, offering one-hour cruises as opposed to the two-hour excursions possible on the Texas Tease.
Harrison’s Landing offers another two-hour tour aboard the Nell Betty II, a 38-foot Catalina sailboat that seats six passengers.
“We have so many more possibilities to expand our cruise options with the Tease,” Kates said. “We are talking about adding a daylong cruise to Port A, where we drop off passengers and come back for them later in the day.”
The Tease also might soon run cruises out of the RTA dock on North Beach.
“We have to check on the dredging over there,” Kates said.
“It’s been a few years since that dock was used, and it may have sanded in.”
Harrison’s Landing is looking to further expand its boating options by adding small craft and kayak rentals next season, she added.
“We’re looking forward to adding new amenities for tourists and locals alike,” she said, adding that the Texas Tease joined the mix by popular demand. “We are regularly contacted about larger vessels for longer cruises. The Texas Tease will be something different added to our fleet. There’s definitely a demand for it.”
The two-hour cruises on the Tease run two a night, one leaving the dock at 6:30 p.m. and the other at 9 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. The Sunday cruises leave at 5 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Tours are $35 for ages 11 and older and $25 for ages 10 and younger.
Japonica’s one-hour cruises run daily May through Labor Day weekend. The schedule varies during the off-season, depending on the weather. Tickets may be purchased at Cathy’s Boutique and Gifts on Harrison’s Landing at the People’s Street T-Head and are $15 for ages 11 and older and $10 for ages 10 and younger. For a detailed schedule, visit harrisonslanding.net.