At St. Lucie Lock

After a windy night listening to fenders squeaking against the dock, hearing wind whistling past something that we could never find, digesting crab meat, we left the next morning in cold, but relatively calm weather. If forced to choose we’ll take calm any time. We’ll also take boring as compared to fixing fuel lines and climbing through windows with boat hooks in hand. The bruise across my midriff has gone from the purple stage to yellow, but I’m still not wearing my bikini. And don’t worry. I won’t be wearing it when the bruise does heal!

We rocked along the next day through some beautiful scenery, passing some gorgeous homes all along the Florida Inland Waterway. Let me tell you: all the gold is not in California. We stopped near Sarasota to fuel up and I asked the dock attendant how far we were from Nokomis, where I used to spend a lot of happy vacation time when I was a kid. He told me were about 14 miles south, so I thought I had missed seeing Casey Key, where one of my uncles had a home and some rental cottages and another uncle owned a grocery store.

Later, after my nap, I realized while checking the chart that the guy was confused (or I had misunderstood) and we were at that moment cruising between the mainland and Casey Key. It has changed so that I didn’t recognize anything on the “bay” side that we were traveling down, but I told Gary about the time my cousins and I waded the bay at low tide collecting scallops, which my uncle then cleaned and cooked. Great memories, even after over 50 years! I had to call my cousin Nel and reminisce a bit.

Soon, though, we were at the only part of the island I recognized, the jetty. It was near there that my uncle had taken my cousin Joe and me fishing. He had pulled up to a dock and my job was to hold the bottom rung of the ladder while Joe ran up to buy bait. I held on tightly. The boat swung out from under me and there I hung: nothing to put my feet on, no way to go up, no way to go down. Uncle Edward was laughing so hard he was no help, either. It took Joe and Unk both to haul me back into the boat, dripping wet, jeans and all. Fortunately, at age 14 there was a lot less of me to haul in.

Another memorable occasion was Joe’s dad and our Uncle Tobe taking us out to teach us to water ski. Joe tried, and when he fell, it was my turn. I sat on the gunwale of the boat, pushed off, and found the seat of my bathing suit was caught by the prongs that held the boat canopy in place when it was being used. There I hung for what seemed an eternity till they could all quit laughing and pop my seat loose, which sent me flailing like a crab ignominiously into the drink. I did get up on the skis before Joe did, though. And he’s never forgiven me for that.

After running till late in the afternoon, we followed a narrow channel to an anchorage that Gary had seen mentioned in a Waterway guide. It was totally surrounded by mangrove trees, except for the little entrance channel. There was not a soul around and we spent a beautiful, peaceful night with only a couple of ospreys and some egrets for company. We could see the horns of the crescent moon appear and disappear as the clouds passed in front of it.

Next day we took off for Ft. Myers. We had a little bouncing around in the open water, but it was so mild we hardly noticed. It was cloudy, but another beautiful day for boating. We’ve decided any day on the boat is good. Some are just better than others. We’ve been seeing warning signs for a week about the manatees, but had decided the signs were just a way of getting people to slow down and not wake their docks. Finally, as we were passing Ft. Myers and in the early part of the Okeechobee Waterway, we saw a police boat go by. Later we saw him stop and circle around a few times. When we got almost to him he turned on his blue light and we slowed to a crawl. He pulled up beside us and told us there was a large school of manatees to starboard and to proceed carefully. We never saw the creatures, except as something that looked like shadows moving around in the water, so I was unable to get pictures. But we could tell there was something there. So much for the manatees.

We’ve started doing locks again. Lake Okeechobee is something like 14 feet above sea level. Not far from Ft. Myers we went through the Franklin Lock. It was somewhat of a disappointment after the ones we’d been through on the earlier part of the Loop. We had gone through the world’s largest lift lock at Peterborough, Ontario, the “Big Chute” in Canada where they had lifted the boat in slings and took us across a road, and huge locks on the Tenn-Tom. We had even gone through a double lock that lifted us about 65 feet. These in the Okeechobee Waterway are mostly a couple of feet.  It’s just wait for the green light, go in, grab a rope, hang on for a little while, then out the other side. We even came to one that was open at both ends and we just sailed through. They are installing a  new lock, so for now, there’s no “lift.”

For our first stopover in the Okeechobee Waterway we spent two nights at the Franklin Lock. The locks are operated by the US Army Corps (not corpse) of Engineers and each one has a nice little park where RV’s and boats can stay at very reasonable rates. Rather than charge boats by the foot there is a flat rate of $24.00 per night with a maximum of 14 nights. We also found that with the Golden Age Pass we bought for the National Parks last year we could stay for only $12.00 per night. We opted for two nights at Franklin and enjoyed the little break. Gray hair has its rewards!

There was a one washer/one dryer laundromat about a half-mile from the boat and I used the opportunity to catch up on the laundry and get in a few miles of walking. I joked with folks sitting in front of their RV’s bundled up in winter jackets taking in the sun—and the wind. It wasn’t so awfully cold, but the wind was biting.

Sunday morning we pulled out and headed east. I had already had my Valentine’s Day dinner, since Gary fried up some gorgeous, delicious shrimp and unbagged a salad while I was hiking back with the last load of laundry. Since we’d eaten on the boat for all our meals since our crab feast, he decided that for real Valentine’s Day we’d have catfish at Moore Haven, our next stop. The guidebook said there was a good catfish restaurant there.

The guidebook was wrong. We docked at the city dock in Moore Haven, a really nice dock, with water and electric hookups included for $1.00 per foot. We were right in front of the library and town hall. We could occasionally get internet service from the library wireless, but it was spotty and our own, for some reason, was non-existent. Gary struck up a conversation with a couple of locals who were looking over the three boats docked there. They told him there used to be a place to get catfish, but it was closed and now there were two restaurants in town: Burger King and a taco stand that served awesome Cuban sandwiches. After walking about a mile, we checked out the taco stand. They had no Cuban sandwiches, and what they did have looked pretty unappetizing. So our Valentine’s Day dinner was at Burger King. It’s o.k. I’ve had worse. And I sure didn’t want to cook by the time we walked back to the boat. At least Gary’s knees don’t hurt any more.

Monday may be awful for people having to go back to work, but it was a beautiful day for boating. We went through two more locks and had a glorious day on Lake Okeechobee. It’s shallow, but is a huge lake and can be nasty when it gets snarly. It wasn’t exactly like glass, but as close to it as we could expect, and we got to watch the buzzards, egrets and herons along the way.

Tomorrow we’ll go through the St. Lucie Lock that will lower us back to sea level and we’ll head for Stuart. Tomorrow night should find us in Ft. Pierce on the east coast. For this Presidents’ Day holiday we are at another of those little parks near the lock for the night. We will soon be in the Inland Waterway headed up the coast and home.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 10:16 pm and is filed under Great Loop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.