Storms over Stuart
We ended up having a great few days in Stuart. One of the
highlights was a visit from friends, Todd and Mai, whom we met several years
ago on a dive trip in Indonesia. Over the years we’ve kept in touch on FB and
have both moved from CA to FL. It was wonderful to reconnect!
Originally, we’d thought that we would stay in Stuart until
Tuesday or Wednesday, letting Alberto clear through, the wind/seas calm down,
and the lake come up – then we could decide whether we’d go through or around
Florida to get home. But then we had a very serendipitous encounter and we
found ourselves fleeing Stuart on very short notice!
Sunday evening Martin and I took advantage of 20 minutes of
rainlessness to enjoy a brief happy hour on the flybridge. While up there, some
folks came walking by and introduced themselves – they were from St Pete and one
gentleman, Mark, is a friend of Jim’s as well. We got to talking and he told us
that he’d just come through the lake and that there was plenty of water but
that there’s a railroad bridge on the east side of Lake Okeechobee that’s going
down for repairs. He was told that passage through would be challenging to
impossible over the next couple of weeks. Whoa!! I’d read on the Waterway Guide
that the Ortona Lock was undergoing repairs in a week or so and would be down
but we still had plenty of time to get through before that. I’d heard nothing
of the Indiantown RR bridge.
Monday morning we called the bridge and sure enough, we were
told to “come through today or be prepared to wait hours to try to get through
once work starts on Tuesday”. Yikes. Martin and I aren’t the best at spontenaity,
we like to have a plan and try to stick to it which, unfortunately, doesn’t
work well with boating in general. But we managed to come to a decision and act
quickly – it was helpful to have Jim with us too! We wanted a mid to rising
tide while going up to the Stuart Lock and it happened to be high tide when we
made the decision to go so we had to act fast if we wanted to catch a falling
highish tide. We managed to return a rental car, check out of the marina and
cast off within 45 minutes – we’re so proud!
The rest of day couldn’t have gone better! We made the first
lock just as it’d released folks to the east side and passed right through
-raising up 14.6 feet
Entering locks
Unhappy reptile in the lock!
Then we got to the infamous RR bridge and it was open so we
passed through there. Indiantown Marina wasn’t responding to phone calls or the
VHF so we figured we’d tie up to the dolphins at the Mayaca Lock. We got there
around 3:00 and they were just locking a few boats through coming east. It was
pretty blowy but we figured we could push on and make it to Roland & Mary
Martin’s Marina before nightfall so decided to keep going through Lake
Ochechobee. And the lake was dis.gust.ing. It was pretty windy and as NOAA said,
it was “moderately choppy”. We had, quite literally, black water spraying up
over the bow and all over the boat for a few hours. B needed a good rinsing
when we got in. Amazingly, it didn’t rain one bit the entire day which we were
happy for – we’d been worried that we could have gotten hit with a squall that
day.
Looked like a big ol’
milkshake!
We arrived at Roland Martin’s around 6:30 and tied up to the
dock. After attending to Blossom for a bit (nasty dirty) we cleaned up and
enjoyed dinner at the restaurant there.
No, none of us had
the gator for dinner 😊
This morning we awoke to welcomed, sunny blue skies, it was
nice to have the break. We weren’t sure where we’d stop for the day, again,
thinking we could pick River Forest, La Belle, Calusa Jack’s or Ft Myers
depending on our speed, weather and dockage availability.
River Forest
We played a sort of “eye spy” game as we cruised along
through Florida. Our tally was: 1 hawk (who flew very close by the boat and was
gorgeous), several cows, herds of horses + a donkey, 1 bald eagle, several
osprey, anhingas, 2 raccoons, 1 wild turkey, 2 turtles, 2 manatee, 1 live gator
sunning, 1 live gator swimming, and 1, I kid you not, enormous headless gator
body being eaten by half a dozen buzzards!!
It must have been killed by a propeller?
We made incredible time and found ourselves arriving into Ft
Myers around 5:15pm. The municipal marina had space for us so we decided to
stay there for a night or two. The marina is right next to downtown and we were
well protected on the inside dock. We’d definitely stay there again. We weathered
a rainy gray day and then woke up to blue skies and a calm wind on Thursday – a
perfect day to go home!
West coast of Florida
Mellow trip w/ Martin on watch
The trip up the coast was largely uneventful. Seas were wonderfully
calm and somehow we managed another transit day with no rain or storms. My
first engine room check I did notice that we were low on hydraulic oil. A bit of
searching and we found the starboard stabilizer cylinder was leaking. Martin
locked the fin and we continued on – the seas were calm and we didn’t really
notice we were down a stabilizer.
St Pete in the
distance – almost home!
By the time we arrived in the bay it was dead calm and
amazingly beautiful. The water looked like velvet. The best thing was that we
were in and tied to the transient dock at 11:55pm so we made it back to St Pete
in May – if only by 5 minutes 😊
What a morning view!
The next morning we had our inspection (to
get our permanent slip assignment. We gave B a thorough wash down and moved to her
new home. Et voila!
Blossom in her new
home
The trip was a bit of a frustrating with the rainy, windy weather
but it was great to be back aboard and to get Blossom back to Florida. We can’t
thank Jim enough – he’s the best and we so appreciate his help getting us home!
And now it’s summer time… Blossom will spend part of the
summer in St Pete and part in River Forest while we’re traveling (River Forest
is our hurricane plan for the season). It’s only a 36 hour trip so we can bring
her back and forth as weather permits.
Boat Business: A few leaky issues:
- The sump pump for the condensate on the AC compressors is leaking a little bit. Another task for St Pete.
- The fresh water faucet on the foredeck has a slight leak.
- The starboard stabilizer cylinder has sprung a leak. We lost a bit of oil on the trip up. We spoke with an ABT tech and he'll be coming Tuesday.
