Monday 3/6/17: Navigator Karen has been watching several different weather sources, and charting and building spreadsheets for optional plans. (Once an accountant, always a spreadsheet lover!) How far will we go, where can we stay, anchor or marina, what are the weather variables? What travel time is needed to meet the schedules at the locks. We have to consider the weather, wind, and wave direction in a variety of places for the various places we want to go in the next week. Just because the wind isn’t blowing here, doesn’t mean it’s the same story 70 miles away as we make our way across the state.
It’s looking like Wednesday is going to be a great day to cross Lake Okeechobee. So that means we’ll need to leave the marina in Ft Myers on Tuesday to make our way up the river, since the lake is about 70 miles from here, including 3 locks to go through. And next Saturday 3/11/17 is looking more and more promising as a day to cross the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. 🙂 The wind on Tuesday will be better than it has been, so that’s good for moving on out of here. But there is a minus tide in the morning, so that adds some interesting things to consider. Since we are docked right at the seawall, Captain checked the depth at low tide yesterday. Woah!…. we may have actually had our props in the mud! So, when we pull out, we’ll have to move the boat out of the slip a ways before even starting the engines, so that we don’t suck up a bunch of mud or damage the hardware! Interesting that we are up river more than 20 miles from the Gulf, and there are significant tidal changes! Being from the Puget Sound area, a 1.5 foot tide change sounds pretty wimpy. But when you’re in 5′ of water, and you draft 3.5’… it is significant! All the waters are shallow here in Florida. It is hard to get used to. Read more
