After breakfast at Ella Mae’s with Peter & Julie, we left Ft. Myers. We went through our first lock on the OCWW, the Franklin Lock. It raised us one foot! After the locks on the Illinois and Tenn-Tom, this was nothing! However, the OCWW locks work a little differently. They have no valves to allow water in, they just crack open the lock door to slowly fill the chamber, so it is a longer process.
We spent our first night at a free dock in LaBelle. The story goes that a lady who lived on the water allowed boaters to tie to her dock when traveling the waterway. Upon her death, she left her property to the City with the stipulation that they build docks (with power & water) for the free use of boaters, and her house would become a public library. Sweet! Julie had scoped out restaurants in town; we dined at Forrey Grill. Nice evening, good company.
Next day we moved on to the town of Clewiston. This is the jump off point for crossing shallow Lake Okeechobee. Cleared one low bridge and two locks on route to the infamous Roland & Mary Ann Martin’s Marina. They have a wildly popular Tiki Bar! We walked into town to stretch our legs then hit the Tiki Bar for cocktails with Peter & Julie. It started to rain, then it poured and poured some more. Cocktails stretched into dinner. We returned to the boats when it finally stopped raining, well after dark.
The next morning, we bailed and pumped up the dinghy (again), then bid farewell to Peter & Julie. They are heading straight through to Stuart, about 60 miles. That’s a really long day for us so we planned to overnight in Indiantown. We left Clewiston at 7:00 and had a calm 25-mile lake crossing. We drove through heavy rain for about 30 minutes just before Indiantown. The marina was closed but they told us to tie up to the face dock and settle up in the morning. Really nice facility: boaters lounge with screen porch and air-conditioned kitchen. Have I mentioned how hot it is? We wrote blog posts in the air-conditioned space while doing laundry, then grilled steaks & new potatoes for dinner. Couldn’t resist the A/C, so I carted the dishes to the boater’s kitchen to prevent heating up the cabin before bedtime!
Following morning, we showered and ate breakfast while waiting for the marina to open. We paid our tab, replenished ice, and got underway a little after 8:00. We arrived at our final lock, St. Lucie, but the lockmaster was locking through westbound boats. We waited over an hour to get locked through. The lockmaster insisted on lowering lines to you as you entered the lock, but he was busy chatting up the young lady in the boat ahead of us when we approached the lock wall. (Not her fault; amazing young woman single-handing a 25’ Ranger Tug from New York to the Keys and back!) The wind caught our bow pulling me away from the lock wall. The Lockmaster tried to throw me a bow line; he hit me in the head with the line (twice) before he decided to throw me a mid-ship line so I could pull Steal Away back to the wall. This lock lowered us only 14-feet, but it took 30 minutes. Finally, he would not allow us to drop the lines in the water upon exiting like every other lock. Oh no, he had to come and take them from us. Control-freak, not impressed! ☹ And I have a lump on my head!
Our next delay was Stuart where it took 30-minutes to get through the bascule bridge. The current was running strong, and it only opened every 30 minutes. When he finally lowered the traffic gates, a car was beyond the gate. The lockmaster had to get the car to back up behind the gate before he could open. Good grief! Once we exited the OCWW, the water was very rough; 19-mph winds and whitecaps. Too rough at our first-choice anchorage so we continued on to Manatee Pocket. The seas were calmer in this anchorage, but the wind was howling! Peter & Julie invited us to dinghy into their marina (which had no available slips), but the winds were so strong we decided not to leave the boat for fear we would drag anchor (and it would have been a very wet ride!)