Not puffins!

Once I got some good sleep last night, I realized this morning that those birds are not puffins.  We don't have them here.  They are terns.  Whew!  Don't you feel better!
I guess we both slept well as we did not wake up until about 6:45 this morning.  A half hour later we were pulling away from Pahokee City Docks.  An hour after that "Thanks Dad" hailed us on the VHF. John was asking that I bring our boat down to idle speed or neutral.  I thought he was asking so that he could overtake us, but I thought that was strange.  He must have heard the hesitation in my voice as he told me he had to hand something off to us.  Ray was down below making breakfast.  One of our signals when we need the other is to idle down, so of course he came right up.  He wondered what was wrong.  I explained.  What in the world could they want to give us?  My guess was something we forgot in order for them to feel it was important enough to do this maneuver.  Ray couldn't imagine what we could have forgotten, so then we started making fun as we always say "we don't need any more friends", are they giving us another boat card, breakfast?  What could it be?  Yes, we forgot something.  In disassembling the broken dinghy davit yesterday, we somehow left some of the cables laying on the dock.  I don't know how that happened as many times as we walked by them between trash take out, depowering, and rolling up the water hose this morning.  Sue was laughing at how it happens.  She said John is no longer allowed to touch a splitter (the expensive power cord adapter that turns two 30 amp cords into one 50 amp, etc.).  We laughed assuming he must have left one somewhere before.  Nope, three times.

Your tax dollars hard at work.

My egg was now cooked over hard, but soon after that exchange we both traveled through the Torry Island swing bridge at the same opening. I assume the operator appreciated that as he rode out there on his bicycle and cranked it open by hand.
From there it was about five hours of traveling in a channel on the southern rim of Lake Okeechobee between the bank and a grass line.  Just about the time we were getting near the Moore Haven Lock, "Thanks Dad" called us on the VHF again to inform us that the Moore Haven Railroad Swing Bridge just beyond the lock was stuck in a not completely open position.  The wind was blowing pretty good again by this time and blew us against the lock wall kind of hard.  Thankfully that was the only incident between it and the railroad bridge.
Then more ditch for a couple hours.  Just after 3:30 p.m. we pulled into an anchorage titled "Lollypop" on Active Captain.  It is a small canal leading to an embayment at the end.  It kind of looks like a lollipop on the chart.  We came about a third of the way into the canal to anchor as supposedly the embayment is much deeper.  We never expected to see another vessel come into this anchorage, much less the rather large and unusual, aluminum catamaran.  It looked almost as wide as the canal itself.  Then they came beside us on the side we were closer to as we were being blown that way.  All ended up well so far.  Hope they enjoy the embayment as much as we enjoyed the canal this evening.  We watched birds, cows, alligators, and the sky change color with the setting sun before being run inside by mosquitoes.