Nov 7 – 18, 2020 –
As high winds were forecast, and with Hurricane Eta meandering around the Gulf, we elected to head off the ICW, up the St Johns River past Jacksonville. We were not able to get into the popular Ortega Landing marina there, instead docking at Lambs Yacht Center.
Wow! What a facility; very sturdy concrete pilings, concrete docks, even concrete roofs over many of the slips. A real hurricane hole, with a lot of gorgeous yachts tucked inside for long-term storage.
Here are just a couple…
For just $7500 per day, you can charter Innisfail; she was built in the 1930s during America’s “golden age of yachting.” This maritime masterpiece was pressed into service (as were many other private yachts in that period) and served as an armed patrol boat during World War II and then served our U.S. Presidents until she was decommissioned by the U.S. navy in 1965. During the 20th century she wowed royalty and heads of state with her magnificent craftsmanship. Guests included Presidents Kennedy, Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon and Clinton as well as Charles de Gaulle and Anwar Sadat. (from the charter listing)
When it looked like Hurricane Eta was going to head back along the panhandle, we left Ortega and traveled back out the St Johns River to rejoin the ICW enroute to St Augustine. On the way, the forecasted storm track was updated, and was now bearing down right across Florida, between Jacksonville and St Augustine. Oh, great….
We hustled on down to St Augustine to take a mooring ball again, and wait the passage of the now weakened storm. The next day, it tore through quickly, with just a few hours of winds in the 40s, and then the skies cleared and the sun came out. Whew!
We stayed on the mooring ball another night in St Augustine before continuing to press on south. We stopped in Daytona for fuel, and stayed the night at Halifax Harbor Marina, where we got to see the Canaveral launch of an Atlas rocket at sunset. We were very excited to get down to Titusville to anchor where we could see the first SpaceX launch with astronauts to the space station, but a launch delay and poor weather led to us bypassing and going to anchor in Melbourne. Drat!
We stopped at Vero Beach, and met with friends Chris and Alyse Caldwell, whose boating consulting/training business is based there. We got some great tips on crossing the Okechobee Waterway, a shortcut across Florida to the Gulf Coast (instead of going all the way down and across the Keys. And we got to enjoy a double rainbow from the aft deck!
The next day we pushed down to enter the St Lucie River, the entrance to the Okechobee Waterway.
The Okeechobee Waterway begins in the Gulf of Mexico, proceeds along the Caloosahatchee River, crosses Lake Okeechobee, continues through the St. Lucie River then enters the Indian River before reaching the Atlantic Ocean. It extends 154 miles from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico and incorporates the Caloosahatchee River, two channels through Lake Okeechobee, the St. Lucie River, and passes through the Indian River Lagoon. The system is controlled by 5 lock and dam structures, 3 on the Caloosahatchee and 2 on the St. Lucie, and traverses many miles of untouched Florida Everglades and thousands of acres of Old Florida scrub and ranchland.
Our first stop was at Indiantown Marina, a few miles before the Port Mayaca lock that opens to Lake Okechobee. The lake is the second-largest lake (behind Lake Michigan) in the contiguous 48 States and the largest contained within a single state. Lake Okeechobee was known to Florida’s Seminole Indians as “Oki Chubi,” which means “Big Water.”
And with a stiff north wind, it certainly felt like Big Water as we exited the lock and endured several hours of 3-6 foot waves on the beam (from the side) as we made the crossing to Clewiston. We continued on to Moorehaven where we’d spend the night at the free city dock (with a small charge for electric). When we got to the Moorehaven lock, we were amazed at the large ‘rafts’ of floating vegetation that we had to plow through going into, and out of, the lock chamber.
The locks on the waterway were different from any others that we encountered on the Loop; rather than pipes and valves that equalize the levels for boats going up and down by letting water into or out of the chamber, they simply crack open the doors a bit, and let the water gush in, or out (depending on which direction you are going). We make sure to have a good grip on the lines that attach the boat to the lock wall at bow and stern, lest we get ‘flushed’ by the swirling water.
We left Moorehaven on a bright, but very windy, day for the final 55 miles down to Fort Myers. Naturally, the wind kicked up into the 20s as we got closer to the marina, and made the docking a bit challenging, but we ended the day in good shape, having come 1394 miles, on 21 travel days, since leaving Herrington Harbor North in the central Chesapeake Bay on October 18th.
