Early bird gets behind a tow

We knew there was no sense in leaving much before 7:00 a.m. as that is when the locks open on the Okeechobee and Ortona Lock was only about a mile away.  By the time we could see it around 7:15 a.m., we also saw that "Brittany Beyel" was there.  That's what that noise was we heard since we got up this morning.  We have never seen commercial traffic on the Okeechobee before.  Come to find out though in the conversation between the tow operator and the lock master, they will be bringing a space shuttle through.  It will be without the wings though.  There are things on the Okeechobee Waterway with only a 50 foot horizontal clearance, including the locks and some of the bridge spans. With that in mind, we also assumed the Moore Haven Railroad Bridge must have gotten fixed since "Brittany Beyel's" barge was 48 feet wide.  We didn't get into the lock until about 7:50 a.m., but we were out by 8:05 a.m. after about an eight foot drop.
At noon we were doing the same thing.  Waiting for "Brittany Beyel" to lock down two feet in Franklin Lock for our turn.  "Thanks Dad" overtook us about five miles before that, but they were waiting also.  I think it was close to 1:00 p.m. by time we got out.  It was time for lunch.
A couple hours later we turned to starboard in a channel off the ICW just after Fort Myers towards Hancock Creek, about 137 miles since turning onto the Okeechobee Waterway.  This is the first time we have ever anchored in this little cove near North Fort Myers.  It sure is a gem.  It almost seems more like one of the little coves on the Tennessee River.  You would never know we were near such a bustling town when we are nestled into nature.  The one homestead that is visible from here looks to have been there a while.  It has some dilapidated sheds, but the little bit of house we can see seems to be well kept.  We enjoyed watching the two raccoons, the ibis', and either an alpaca or lama.  It was hard to determine from here.

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.

Did he just say that? (Cover your ears)

It was a peaceful night on the mooring ball.  We departed Stuart around seven o'clock this morning. While underway we enjoyed our left over pizza for breakfast.  Things were very uneventful for about the first hour.  Ray was looking forward to going by American Custom Yachts.  We had work done there 11 years ago when we were first bringing the boat home.  Since then we have received their newsletter publication and are impressed by some of the work they do there.  Just about the time we got there a new looking, fairly large sport fish was being towed out of the sling by a small skiff.  I was prepared to give them a wide berth when Ray suggested that I stop.  After realizing that they were going to tow this boat against the current Ray admitted that we should have just kept traveling. Now it was too late.  They were about to get blown into red marker 46 which I thought I would mention because after looking up their web site, it says they are at mile marker 46.  I'll get back to that in a minute.  So guys on the bow of the sport fish are yelling things to us.  I assume they were trying to tell us they were being towed as Ray yelled "Yeah, I can see that."  After honestly waiting close to 15 minutes for them to get out of the way enough for me to feel comfortable with going around them at a less than idle speed, they start yelling obscenities to us.  Ray was yelling back some of the same.  I could not understand what the big deal was.  You know how slow we travel anyway and we were plenty clear of this boat.  The testosterone continued to fly with the presumed employee on the sport fish yelling "If you would get your dick out of your wife's ass..."  I couldn't believe how stupid this was becoming.  By then I was pissed and gave our boat as much throttle as I could.  I'm sure it didn't make a bit of difference with our lack of wake, but I just could not believe the things that were said over nothing.  I was seriously going to e-mail American Custom Yachts to let them know what kind of representation they have on the water.  When I saw that they don't know the difference between a mile marker and a day marker, I decided they were just idiots anyway.  By the way, they're at about mile marker 14.9.

An example of the large homes and boats continuing to be on the water even in the St. Lucie canal.

Finally got a good picture of a bald eagle.

This gator was about as far out of the water as it could get on
this rather tall rock just before the Port Mayaca Lock.

Thankfully the rest of the canal was pretty uneventful.  We had a slight delay at St. Lucie Lock as one of the doors malfunctioned, but we were up and out of there just before 9:00 a.m.  Nearly four hours later we were in Port Mayaca Lock for about a one foot lift. "Thanks Dad", a Mainship trawler overtook us about five miles previous and yesterday actually. We talked to them on the VHF and knew they were going to take the same southern rim route as we planned.  We heard them confirm this with someone telling them the lake was rough.  Well, we were not expecting all hell to break loose when we exited.  There was at least a three foot chop coming out of the lock.  I went below to secure things right away.  By the time I got back to the fly bridge, something else went crashing.  I let Ray investigate as I had no idea what that could have been.  Ray said the dinghy davit broke.  Did he just say that?  We had to really slow down while Ray got some lines tied to it to secure it as best as possible.  I kept driving and had no idea how bad it was.  Come to find out, it was the welds that broke.

See how cattywhompus the dinghy ended up.

We continued our way on the southern rim route as planned, just at a much slower pace.  The winds were still southeast so we expected to get some reprieve.  It took a while, but it did gradually get better and we increased our speed a little at a time.  We were originally planning to anchor about five miles past Pahokee but Ray thought we should stop at a marina to see what we could do to rectify our situation.  After reading the reviews on Active Captain, we were hesitant and again debated anchoring but then thought about what could happen if we got waked while trying to "fix" the dinghy situation. We opted to pull into the marina to see what it was like, then decide what to do.  We knew "Thanks Dad" had planned to stop at the Pahokee City Marina and they were on a long dock.  We called them on the VHF to inform them of our predicament and asked if they could help us get tied up behind them on our port side in the wind as the dinghy was hanging way off of the starboard stern making that side impossible.

The resident gulls and puffins.

There were really no issues with getting docked.  Some of the reviews were right about there being bird crap everywhere because there are no boats in here.  It seems when the winds blow out of the north it really gets rocking in here.  I can just imagine it after what it looked like today coming out of that lock.  The reviews also mentioned the shady characters and unsafe conditions in town after dark. Upon our arrival, Sue on "Thanks Dad" informed us that John, the Captain, was a former police officer so he called the police here to find out if it was safe.  The officer notified them that it was safe. The officer did come and visit them too while we were working on our mess.
We took the new davit system apart and off of the boat as much as we could.  Thankfully we still had our old davit system on both boats.  So we put the dinghy basically back up like we were doing it before we installed the new davit system last spring.  John was nice enough to help me hoist the engine up to the hand rail bracket.  That sure helped a lot.

It's a miracle!

This was a morning shot.

Not much sun.

The sky cleared some at

the time we went by

Jupiter Inlet.

Not much sleep was had last night.  The ESE winds turned a little more south and made for some pitching at anchor.  Thankfully it held, just the wave chop slapping under the swim platform seems like it could jar your teeth out at times.  Therefore we were up early and departed just about as soon as we could see.  One more good bye to "Septembre" on the radio. 
We didn't have to have any bridges opened today so it was smooth motoring.  We even had the tide with us all day!  It's a miracle!  We traveled just over 5 hours to go 35 miles.  We picked up mooring ball number 24 at Sunset Bay Marina in Stuart.  It was one of only two left available.
It didn't take too long and we got the dinghy down as my parents, aunt and cousin just arrived on shore to spend the afternoon with us.  Ray and I ate lunch at Duffy's while the rest of them partook in just some liquid refreshments.  They were still all full from the breakfast they stopped for in Vero Beach at Mrs. Macs Filling Station.  Jealous!  Aunt Lee did have some Gelato at the ice cream/candy shop after our lunch.  Thankfully mom and I got out of there scott free, although there were a bunch of tempting treats.
We spent the rest of the afternoon at one of the tables at Sunset Bay enjoying the sun, breeze and laughter.  Ray brought some ice back to the boat, loaded up our new soft side Yeti cooler from the best boat guest ever, and we drank our own beers.

This colorful fellow got our attention.

Our visitors left around 5:00 p.m.  We were about to take another load of ice to the boat when a boater asked if we could give him a ride to his boat on mooring ball number 29.  We had a pleasant short visit with Jerry.  We asked him for a recommendation to eat besides Duffy's.  He laughed because that's where he had just come from after his business trip to Houston.  After that we went back to shore to walk around town some more.  Duffy's was the happening place but we went with Jerry's other suggestion and had pizza at the Luna Italian Restaurant.
Unfortunately at dinner we got the sad news that our friend Nancy had a stroke today.  Please say a prayer for her, her husband Bob and family.

On the move again

Boca Raton Lighthouse

We had a fun time in Ft. Lauderdale.  As soon as Doug left the boat early Sunday afternoon, the winds started blowing and haven't stopped yet.  Sunday evening we went to check on Claude and Pascale after not seeing much of them with all of our visitors.  We unexpectedly stayed for dinner and had a marvelous time way too late into the night.  We won't mention any names, but someone had an AFD on Monday despite it being happy hour when the four of us went to dinner.  Ray and I had to use our left over drink tokens from Friday night.
The winds made for a very restless night for both of us, but we were untying the multiple lines on the boat and off the dock by 7:15 this morning.  Our first encounter was a mega yacht waiting to get towed up the New River.  It was neat to see how they stage and do that.
It was a busy day with many bridges.  Some we needed opened so we were usually waiting.  At one time there were seven of us waiting, including Claude and Pascale on "Septembre" when they caught up to us.  Then sometimes we would pass some of those same boats as they were waiting for another bridge that we did not need open.  It was back and forth like that for most of the day with a couple of them.
In Lake Worth we were looking forward to our last bridge opening of the day.  A couple of the boats were just ahead of us, and we couldn't quite make it.  We assumed we would catch the one on the next half hour opening.  We called about ten minutes prior to their scheduled opening only to find out that they close for an hour and a half during rush hour because the bridge is under construction.  I don't know what their main job source was there, but rush hour was 3:00 - 5:15 p.m.  If you're keeping track, yes, this is the same bridge that was under construction a year and a half ago and we got caught at it in just about the same circumstances.  It had already been a long day and we still had about two hours before we would reach our intended anchorage.  We eased up to the bridge's tide board.  It read about 15 feet minimum clearance.  Of course this bridge did not tell us what the additional clearance was as some do, usually 3 or 4 feet.  Ray decided to take our anchor light down as it is the highest thing atop of our radar arch.  We went slow with the current thankfully against us, but found we had plenty of room even if he had not removed the light.  Whew!  That saved us about an hour and a half of waiting.
We continued on, finally getting a good push once we were north of Lake Worth Inlet, with not even an hour left to take advantage of it.  We anchored at the north end of Lake Worth near North Palm Beach ten hours after we started traveling today.  Claude and Pascale stopped by after bringing Maggie to shore to say good bye.  They will be continuing north tomorrow as we will turn west to head across Lake Okeechobee.

Ft. Lauderdale

We left Boca Chita at 7:20 this morning.  A fast boat had already come in, presumably to get a spot for the weekend.  We hear it gets crazy here.  Even the park ranger confirmed it.
We were underway for a couple of hours still in Biscayne Bay.  Doug made us breakfast.  "Septembre" called us on the radio to ask our location.  They went on to Hurricane Harbor last night.  They had planned on No Name Harbor right next to it, but we assume it was full just as our friends on "Byrd Ketcher" had said two nights earlier.  "Septembre" got in behind us to travel through Miami.  We only needed two bridges open.  We just missed the opening on the first one and had to wait almost 30 minutes for its next opening.
It was another uneventful but pretty day.  Lots of stuff to see in civilization compared to where we've been for the past few days.  We pulled into slip 56 at the city marina on the New River at about 3:00 p.m.  For dinner we ended up at Pizza Craft which was a phenomenal meal.
We will stay here until Tuesday morning as plans are right now.  Doug flies out on Sunday.  My parents plan to come and take over his accommodations after they take him to the airport.

Boca Chita

Last night was our first night to use our new windlass that Ray installed while we were in Stock Island.  It was also the first night we used our new stainless steel anchor acquired from "Finally".  They both did well and Ray washed it down as he retrieved it this morning out of Blackwater Sound.  He thought the fresh water rinse might be a good idea after the problems with the last windlass from lack of such maintenance.

We departed at 7:30 a.m. and had a very uneventful day of travel for 5 hours to go almost 32 miles.  The waters were calm and clear through Card Sound, Little Card Sound, Biscayne Bay, etc.

Not long after we arrived at Boca Chita Key National Park and tied to the east wall of the harbor, some park rangers arrived and allowed us access into the lighthouse.  This was our first opportunity

to do that after being here several times.
After we took a walk over to the two new Cuban refugee boats that are now on the island.  As always, it is just amazing to think of that being the better option.  From there Doug and I took a quick walk around the island.  The mosquitos got more ferocious as we went.  Doug was prepared to go for a swim to escape them, I could only get knee deep, but it sure felt good.

Ray was going to walk to Miami

A few other boats pulled in to spend the night after our arrival.  One was a couple that passed us yesterday.  We wondered how they could have pulled in after us.  They attempted to go to Bimini today, but 20 miles out to sea they turned back when the Gulf Stream was too rough.  Another couple were the park hosts which we had never seen before either.