Crossing Florida by boat - day one

We were underway at 0730 from Lake Worth anchorage after a peaceful night. The air has dried out considerably from what it has been since leaving the Keys, and most of the day was passed comfortably until we left the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and entered the St Lucie Canal. At that time the easterly wind came astern of us meaning our forward motion negated the wind speed. It got a bit sticky.

As we passed through Stewart, I saw ahead a familiar vessel whose presence I was forewarned of by Linda Vanaman.  It was the Say Goodbye with Ralph Yost and wife aboard headed to New Jersey to finish their Great Loop off.  To use an old sailing ship term, we "spoke" them in passing.

Another interestingly named trawler yacht, the Compass Rose, went by and when I asked the skipper on the radio about it, he confirmed that it was named after the doughty corvette in Lieutenant Commander Nicholas Monsarrat's immortal semi-autobiographical novel of life and death in the North Atlantic convoys of WWII, The Cruel Sea.  I read it in my early teens and was inspired by it to experience the "hard lying" life in destroyers.

Tomorrow we could end up speaking the Morning Star with Randy Pickleman and wife aboard as we meet out on the Lake on opposite courses.  If we stop and chat, it will be a "gam," something the old-time whaling ships used to do out on the far-flung whaling grounds of the world.

Instead of bringing up a file I have on the Okeechobee Waterway and reviewing listings of the locks and bridges like I should have, I just sallied forth this morning with little concern for what we would find. In the 20-plus years since I had last passed this way, I had forgotten that we would encounter a lock shortly after starting the St Lucie portion of the waterway. So I had not forewarned the Seminole crew about the lock, and we came around a bend to find a sign saying “Arrival Point,” I thought, “Aww sh__, there’s a lock coming up. Luckily, there was a delay while the lock was bringing down some boats coming the other way, and I briefed Jim and Jackie about a few points to ponder about locking through.

The lift was about thirteen feet or so, and the way they admit water into and out of the chambers here is to crack the lock doors open a bit. In the waiting about to get in the lock, Seminole ended up going in first and thus received the brunt of the water flow coming into the lock chamber. That pushed the boat a bit catawampus, and Jim and Jackie struggled a bit with the bow and stern lines to keep the boat straight.

We arrived here at Indiantown Marina, ten miles from Lake Okeechobee at about 3:30 PM, and we all rode our bikes the mile into town to eat Italian at Dee Stephano’s and grocery shop at the IOGA store next door.

We will get underway at 8-ish tomorrow for a 50-mile run through the rest of the St Lucie Canal, across the lake, and along the rim route a few miles to Moore Haven, where we hope to find overnight moorings.