Back on the Atlantic Coast of Florida from Fort Myers to Vero Beach

January 13-24, 2015

Tree Contest Winners

This time we have two winners of our Identify-The-Weird-Tree contest. The tree is ceiba speciosa, also known as silk floss tree and floss silk tree. A high school friend of Wayne's, Russ Mentzer, as well as the intrepid Hal Bloom, who was our last winner, correctly identified it. Congratulations you trivia experts!

Kids don't want to climb this tree!!

And the winners are......

Russ Mentzer

Hal Bloom

From the West Coast to the East Coast

We have traveled across South Florida from Fort Myers to Stuart via the Lake Okeechobee Waterway, OWW, and then north 45 more miles to Vero Beach where we are now tied up in the Loggerhead Marina.

The various legs of our boat travels so far this winter

The trip across Florida on the OWW was 145 miles and consisted of two overnight stops. The first stop was at Moore Haven at the western edge of Lake O. When we left Fort Myers the morning was cool with total cloud cover and we were heading into the wind.

Heading out from Fort Myers - misty, dreary and cool with a stiff breeze

One of our first curious sights. No more oil fueled generators in Florida - all are being converted to natural gas turbines. But have you noticed lower power bills?

With our travel speed of 9 mph and a 10 to 12mph headwind we were wearing jackets and jeans the entire day. There are three locks on this leg which is the Caloosahatchee River to Lake Okeechobee. We traversed two of them the first day. The first lock, W P Franklin, was about 20 miles after starting out from Ft. Myers and was temporarilly closed down for maintenance. The lock tender told us that we would have to wait for a full hour before she could open for us, We just pulled into the spill basin and dropped anchor and waited on the radio for instructions. Luckily we were allowed to pass first in our easterly direction and rose about 2 feet.

Anchored and waiting for the lock to open. Still somewhat foggy today

We continued another 28 miles to the second lock, Ortoona, which took us up another 11 feet. Just as we got into the lock and the lock tender began letting the water pour in, the clouds opened up and dumped rain on us. We could not leave our places holding lines. We had put on raincoats but our pants, shoes and socks were soaked when we could finally let go of the ropes holding us to the lock wall. Happily, it did not rain the rest of the day.

Railroad bridge that we asked to open for us

Interesting riverside dwellers

Another RR bridge

Thanks for the opening

RR workings are pretty ugly but do the task

We arrived at the city of Moore Haven at 4:15. Moore Haven is right on the western edge of Lake O and immediately before the last lock before entering Lake O. We paid $40 to the City Clerk across the street from the dock. $1 per foot of boat is cheap dockage in Florida. For our money we got several pilings to tie to, 30 amp electricity, and good water. We visited the library also across the street and used books were going for a dollar/plastic grocery bag. Wayne found enough reading for the rest of the season and some for the spring also. We gave the friends of the library $10 for our bag as it was such a good deal. After dumping our bag of books on the boat we walked four blocks to a Mexican restaurant that we had read about in Active Captain. Our dinners were very good and cooked to order. We were the only customers and the owner was very gracious and friendly. The winds died down to nothing and we enjoyed a comfortable sleep.

The friendly owner of Anto jitos in Moore Haven

We shoved off just after full daylight the second day of travel with some trepidation. It was foggy and we have sworn never to travel in fog again. The fog arrived as we were preparing to depart and we wanted to at least get through that third lock and then drop anchor on the other side and wait out the soup if necessary. The lock took us up another two feet and we were in Lake Okeechobee. Hooray. And, the 300 yards that we had just traveled took us out of the fog. Now we were on the rim route.

There are two ways to cross the big lake. One route is to leave the rim route after about 10 miles and go straight across 30 miles of open water with the possibility of rough conditions in winter winds. The second route, the full rim route, stays along the earthen dike and its alongside canal for 40 miles and is totally protected by shallow grassy flats for all but the last 12 miles. We chose route #2, the rim route. See the map for a better understanding. The day was truly pretty after the dubious start in the fog. We had a slow and uneventful trip though we were pushing our speed a bit and running on both engines. We wanted to get all the way to Stuart because there are no anchorages on the St Lucie River to the east of Lake O.. We were sprinkled on as we entered the open water area of the lake but it was very light.

Construction along the Lake Okeechobee waterway.
A boat was aground to the left when we passed this spot last February.

View of Lake O as we left the protection of the rim route and headed into the open lake for the final 12 miles

Lake Okeechobee
The sky turned ugly fast but we only got light sprinkles and then the sun reappeared

Our next lock, the Port Myakka Lock was on the St Lucie River where it leads from the lake. We were given immediate passage and dropped 3 to 4 feet. 500 yards into the St Lucie River from the Myakka Lock is the old RR lift bridge. This bridge prevents many sailboats from traversing the Okeechobee Waterway.

Indiantown Marina will strap barrels to one side of too tall sailboats. Then they fill the barrels
with water and tilt the boat over to pass under this bridge.

24 miles ahead we entered the St Lucie Lock and this one dropped us 14 feet to sea level of the Atlantic Ocean. It was now almost 4 PM and we had another hour of travel to reach Stuart, FL and a known good anchorage. We had found two possible anchorages listed in Active Captain and decided to try the one that best described the depths and swing room that we need for 40 feet of boat and 75 feet of anchor chain. However, that place was only about 60 feet wide at the entrance to a side creek. We went further into the creek to a spot that showed on our charts and GPS to be the widest point. There were large trees overhanging the water and narrowing the usable channel so we turned around with barely enough room to pivot on our axis and got out of there. On to Stuart! We arrived just as the sun was beginning to set and anchored across from the city marina mooring field. We saw a beautiful sunset and enjoyed another calm anchorage for the night. Our anchorage saved us the $20 mooring field rate.

Sunset over our anchorage in Stuart

Other boats in Stuart

The following morning we slept in after our ten-and-a-half hours of travel the previous day. As we approached the Stuart bridge to request an opening we heard sirens. It turned out that the railroad bridge just beyond the Stuart bridge was closing for a train to pass. Bad News! That always results in a 30 to 45 minute wait. That is just what it was - 45 minutes. No anchoring this time. We had to hold the boat into the current and fight the winds that were starting to become quite strong, The street bridge here has 11 feet of clearance and the railroad bridge has only 7 feet of clearance. When we finally passed through the two bridges the wind had built to 12 to 15 mph and the wide river was getting a good chop. We had seven miles to go to reach the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway that would lead us north to Vero Beach. When we got to the ICW and turned north we faced into 15 to 18 mph winds, two foot waves and opposing current. Our ground speed dropped 3 mph immediately. We zipped all the canvas on the flybridge for wind protection and plowed on. We bucked the wind, waves and current until 3PM when we arrived at Loggerhead Marina in Vero Beach. We tied up to the fuel dock and pumped our holding tanks - those are the tanks that hold our sewage. The we looked at the slip that we were assigned. Due to the high winds we decided to stay tied to the fuel dock hoping that the winds would be less in the morning. They weren't and the next day we proceeded to our slip and entered bow first to have better control of the boat. We are still that way a week later but we are comfortably settled and may keep things like this for a while

Wayne's brother, Howard and wife, Donna at BBQ restaurant the night that we arrived in Vero. Thank you both!

Settling in at Loggerhead

Within two days of our arrival at Vero we had touched base with Howard and Donna, Wayne's brother and our sister-in-law, and rented a car to go to Punta Gorda to pick up our parked Trailblazer. Jann and Gary were still in Punta Gorda so we enjoyed lunch with them and Gary's sister, Meredith. Doesn't it seems strange that Punta Gorda is a five day trip by boat for us but only two hours and forty-five minutes by car? These winters really are life in the slow lane.

This is our Enterprise rental car to drive to Punta Gorda - we dubbed it
the Roller Skate. A worrisome transportation mode on two lane highways.

Jann, Gary and Meredith
The two on the left live on their boat full-time
with their "dog," Beanie Baby Bob.

We've also enjoyed a marina pot luck dinner, a chili cook-off sponsored by the marina and a cocktail party in the Captain's lounge here. Wayne sampled twelve of the fifteen chilis competing in the cook-off. His company on the boat the next day was barely tolerable. Loggerhead is welcoming and comfortable with friendly staff and resident boaters.

Another high point of this year's visit was attending a play with Howard and Donna at the Vero Beach Riverside Theater. This time we saw Crazy for You featuring a talented New York cast. (Some friend back in North Carolina - please tell Roger Watson he was even better as the dad than the professional we saw here.)

By now we've met up with Howard and Donna for a couple of good restaurant meals. Those two do know the best spots to eat in Vero. We've also had a quick visit with our friend Roger and are looking forward to tomorrow when the family of a high school friend of Patrick's will be joining us on the boat for audience participation low country boil. We'll tell you more about that later.

One of the golf courses at Vero Beach at Loggerhead Grand Harbor Marina on a morning walk

Still Sewing Along

The local quilt guild meets every week and this past Thursday I joined them for a badly needed "quilt guild fix" and to get some advice on some of my current projects. They were so helpful and gave me several good ideas. This year I'll be able to attend their Quilt Show over Valentine's Day weekend and I'm looking forward to it.

A stitched bird-of-paradise flower. The technique is called thread painting and you can see where
I've machine stitched in leaf veins and flower details. Interesting and fun to do. As you can see, this
is not yet done. It's one of the pieces on which I was seeking advice.

These blocks were made by members of my North Carolina guild. I'm trying to come up
with a good way to make this into a queen-sized quilt for the boat and asked the Vero guild for ideas.
Stay tuned for their ideas.

Aren't these cute woven stars? They are made
of stiffened fabric. Take note: If you're on my Christmas list, don't look at them as they may
be your Christmas gift next year. Oops, too late.

Sights Along the Way

The south side of the Okeechobee rim route is built up to
prevent flooding. These three photos show the gravel and rock piled every mile or two in case the dike is breached in a hurricane. Some large rocks were as large as small pickup truck beds