Day 3-Okeedokee on the Okeechobee

Monday, March 22, 2021.
Weather: Temp: 72/54, Humidity: 95/50%, Top Wind: 11mph, Precip: None, Miles Traveled: 63

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We had such a nice peaceful night. The water was so smooth and calm. OH! I forgot to tell you that one of the upgrades that Island Girl got since our last trip out, is a new mattress on our bed. It is a custom made 8” thick mattress. 😃. Our old one was 4 inches…. and over 2o years old. This new one is SOOO much more comfortable, so we’ve been sleeping pretty darn good. Even at that, I woke up before the alarm clock went off, but I was rewarded with such a pretty sunrise.

Our new friends on Beachside left the dock at about 7:15. They figured that we’d catch them on the lake, because they can only go 9mph, and we like to go fast (20mph) across the lake. We left the dock at about 8:00, tootled under the highway bridge and called the lock. Darn. The lock tender said that the river was too high so he needed to divert some water to a spillway, so we would need to stand by for 15-20 minutes. Interesting how this water management system works. 🤔 I guess we should have just called him from the dock! At least it was calm, so we just floated around for a bit.

It wasn’t long before we were given a green light and called into the Moore Haven lock, which would lift us just less than a foot.

We barely felt the water move as the chamber filled, and then we were on our way. There were four boats on the other side waiting to go down. I guess it’s a good thing we were there first, or we would have had to wait for them.

And we were on our merry way, along the “rim canal”. There is always work going on with the Okeechobee dikes, dams, spillways, etc. Somewhere along the way, in 12 feet of water, something went thump. I didn’t see anything float up behind us. Maybe Wallygator rammed us? 🤨. We didn’t feel any new vibration, so hopefully the props are fine. Weird.

We saw an airboat getting ready to go zoom around. But we didn’t see a single gator! 🐊. But that’s probably because there were other boats here before us this morning.

I just think these trees are cool. The water is super high compared to the other times we’ve traveled through here!

There was a whole mob of big vultures having a beach party waiting for something to die.

By 10:30, we made it to Clewiston, where we took a 90 degree turn to the left, out into the lake. Wow there is a lot of water! Last time we were here, there was land visible under these grassy splotches. There is still a long channel that we have to follow for about 10 miles to get out to where we would be on a straight heading to the Port Mayaca lock to go fast.

Beachside left about an hour before us, but they only go about 9mph. Not sure we’ll catch them, although we went 20 mph for about 15 miles once we got out of the channels and into the main body of the lake.

There was a Range Tug that came out of Clewiston marina right after we went by, and he was zooming in go-fast mode too. It looked like we were drag racing each other.

It was a nice morning, but a little chilly. The wind was hitting us on the port side, so Captain had to fight to keep us going in a straight line. And for some reason, there must be some air in the hydraulic steering lines, because the steering got really loosey-goosey for awhile. He just put new seals in it last month when we were in Key West. It made steering in the wind and waves even more ”fun”. 😳. Awetoe (our auto-pilot) did not want to do the job today.

Beachside got to the lock about 10 minutes ahead of us, then there was a sailboat going in. We slowed down, thinking we wouldn’t make this lock-through. But wait! The lock tender called us on the radio and said he would wait for both of us east-bound boats to make this lock. Sweet! Here’s a picture of our new friends.

Tom and Diane took pictures of us! So here we are coming into the lock.

TaDa! The picture kind of cuts off at the anchor, but you can see that we don’t have the long Pinocchio nose anchor pulpit anymore. 🤥

This was pretty funny. After all four boats were in, he thanked the two that waited for us, and then told all of us that it would be about a two-inch drop. SERIOUSLY! He said that if we were here next week, the gates would probably just be wide open for a drive through. That’s how this lock has been the last three times we’ve gone through it. But the lake is so high right now, that they can’t let that much water down the rivers right now. So this is looking behind us as Beachside exits the lock.

Here’s a shot of Island Girl’s butt 🤭 going under a railroad lift bridge. This one was already open for us.

There is one bridge on the St Lucie river that might need to be opened for us, but it was already open. YAY! In the past we’ve had to wait and float for quite awhile for this one.

Traveling the St Lucie river is not as interesting as the Caloosahatchee. This river has a lot of dikes making the sides of the river into hills, so you cannot see anything but this. Not many farms or homes to admire.

Woohoo! By about 3:30 we arrived at the St Lucie campground, and got ourselves secured into our reserved slip #5. Then we helped catch Beachside’s lines in their slip #1. Everybody docks bow in, because the shore is rocky. The piers are short, but there is a piling that we can tie the stern off to. There is water and power on each dock right at the bow, so it works! (As long as you’re agile enough to get on and off over or under our railing!)

Kenny had to fix an emergency with one of our toilets that kind of wanted to be a fountain rather than a flusher. 🥴. He got that fixed, then we poured ourselves a refreshment and took a walk to the campground visitors center down below the lock. This is looking back west toward the lock.

And this is looking east down river after the lock… where we’ll be headed in the morning. It was really a nice spot to just sit and enjoy for a little bit.

Back to the boat for a grilled T-bone for dinner! 😋

Add some taters and salad, a little Nemo & Dori sunshade, and we’ve got a great dinner! The temperature outside was about 72 degrees, no humidity, no wind. I put some island music on, and it was fan-tas-tic!

And here is our sunset. It was a good day. And there are no new bugs here! Just a few persistent freeloaders. But my gosh, there are piles of dead ones! The next marina will need to include a boat wash!

Tomorrow we will exit the Okeechobee Waterway and turn North on the Atlantic ICW. Woohoo!

Here’s our route today. Yep – yellow = fast.

Our route got chopped in half when we shut the engines down in the lock. So here’s the St Lucie side.