Crossing to the "Other Side" - Again.

Earlier I wrote about crossing to the other side of the Gulf of Mexico.  This week we crossed to the other side of Florida, and I would add that it is not nearly as big a deal as the Gulf crossing.  For several reasons: it is an easier location in which to forecast the weather, it does not require overnight travel, we aren’t out of sight of land (well, not for long anyway), it is shorter distance at only 135 miles from Ft. Myers to Stuart.The Caloosahatchee River flows past downtown Ft. Myers so it was quite easy for us to drop our lines at the marina and set out up the river to Lake Okeechobee.  At that point the river is broad and bordered by the city high-rises, the Edison and Ford Estates, and other manmade sights.  But within ten miles it becomes a narrow river, and sometimes a bit of a ditch, as it makes its way through about 60 miles of mostly wilderness and scrub to the lake.  We did pass a couple of small town docks, but mostly we saw trees, water hyacinth, alligators, manatees and more of the same.  One thing there is no shortage of is ‘gators, they are everywhere sunning on the banks and cruising along the edges of the river.  When we passed this campground that appeared to be host mostly to motorhomes and large travel trailers I snapped this picture of a lone little tent pitched near the water.  Larry remarked that perhaps it was a “bait station”, he may be right – you would never catch me sleeping in a tent with all those alligators around.

 

We were treated to the sight of one beautiful lady as we started upriver; the spectacular “S.S Sophie”, a beautiful 80’ wooden yacht built by John Trumpy and Sons in 1947.  http://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/other/greta-van-susterens-trumpy

If you are of a certain ago (our age for example) you may think that she looks vaguely familiar.  If so you may be remembering another Trumpy yacht, the legendary presidential yacht “Sequoia”, used by Presidents from Hoover to Carter. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Sequoia_(presidential_yacht)

 

In fact we shared the first lock of this journey with the Sophie and another 90’ yacht.  There are a total of 5 locks on the Okeechobee Waterway between Ft. Myers and Stuart.  The first three are on the west side of the lake and lock boats up to the level of the lake, the final two are on the east side and they lower boats to the level of the Atlantic on the east coast.  The locks on this system are unlike any others we have been through in the U.S. or the Canadian Trent-Severn Canal in that they are not filled or drained by the opening or closing of valves but by a much simpler method.  When the boats are in the lock chamber and the gates are closed on both ends they simply open the gates on the high end a bit to allow water to flood into the chamber and raise it. How fast the water cascades in depends on how much the lockmaster opens the gates, sometimes it makes for a bouncy ride up!   If they are lowering the boats they simply open the gate on the low end and allow the extra water to flow out until the depth is equalized.

 

We traveled 55 miles and locked through 2 locks between Ft. Myers to the small town of Moore Haven and tied to the city dock for the night.  Like many small towns in rural America this one is down on its luck, recently even the grocery store closed and now they have to make do with a Dollar General or drive the 16 miles to the town of Clewiston. 

When we arrived in Moore Haven we knew that rain and thunderstorms were almost a certainty the next day and so we had planned to spend a day relaxing since we (read Theresa) don’t like to travel in the rain. The rain was ahead of a cold front, the wind came after the front passed and since Lake Okeechobee is a large body of water we decided to sit out the wind event as well, especially when NOAA called Small Craft Warnings for Lake O.  All was not lost, I used the time in Moore Haven to finish the taxes and put that task behind us for another year.

After two days in a one day town we were more than ready to be moving again, so at 7:30 we were in the Moore Haven lock and locking up to the level of the lake, then down a 15 mile canal to the town of Clewiston and out into Lake O.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Okeechobee

 

 

 

We have crossed the lake before in 2007 and at that time the water level was near a historic low and it was a nail-biter as we started out the channel knowing we had only about 15” of water (sometimes a bit less) under our exposed props.  This time the water levels were nearly normal and we enjoyed a cushion of about 3’ under us!  At over 700 square miles Okeechobee is a big lake, in fact it is the second largest lake contained entirely within the lower 48 United States (Michigan is larger, of course).  With an average depth of only 9 feet it is also very shallow for a body of water this large and the waves can build fairly quickly, which is one reason we wanted to get an early start before the winds built for the day.  In fact much of this lake is less than 3 feet deep, and it is balanced by the 12' areas, so it isn't suitable for exploring in a boat like ours.

  Once upon a time Okeechobee was well know as a destination bass fishing lake, and hosted many tournaments.  It was often featured on television with the well known Bassmaster, Roland Martin. Even with all that going for it Okeechobee is not a very pretty lake, the water is brown and yucky looking, and because it is so large a boat crossing the lake is not able to see the shoreline except as a distant horizon.  In short we don’t find it a place to linger.

It is 25 miles across the lake taking the most direct route available, about 3 hours at our speed, and by about noon we were entering Port Mayaca lock on the east side of the lake.  It was a beautiful day to be on the water and aside from the wakes of the faster boats passing us we had a great ride across.  The best part of the trip came when we were approaching Mayaca Lock.  We called to ask for a lock opening and the lockmaster asked our position, when informed we were about 15 minutes out he said “captain I don’t know if you’re going to make it, we have divers here and we have to get them back in the water.  How far out are you again?”  Larry advised him that we could speed up and make it in 10 minutes.  The response came back, “well, I’ll see how soon this westbound gets here”.  With that we pushed our throttles up and met the westbound coming out of the lock.  Needless to say we thanked him profusely for holding for us.  We heard him tell the boat 30 minutes behind us that it would be about 3 hours before the lock was back in service.  Luck was with us because our only other option would have been to put out an anchor and wait!

From Port Mayaca lock it is 40 miles (and one more lock) up the St. Lucie canal and river to the Atlantic Intercoastal Waterway.  It was our intent to anchor in a creek a few miles before we came into Stuart, unfortunately the creek and the wind had other ideas and we were not satisfied with the anchoring situation - mostly due to the direction of the wind.  So after a couple of attempts we decided to move on.  A phone call to the mooring field in Stuart yielded the information that they were “full up”.  Being a bit frugal we were not excited to plunk down $2/ft, plus an electric charge for the privilege of tying to a dock for 12-15 hours so we scouted for an anchorage and Active Captain, an online crowd-sourced guidebook, pointed us to a great spot that afforded us plenty of swinging room and protection from the east winds; not to mention a great view of some of Stuart’s finest homes.

In all we had traveled 130 miles, 75 of it one day, and we were on the “other side”!  Funny thing - the sunsets are about the same over here.

Beautiful home seen from our anchorage in Stuart.

Sunset on the "Other Side"