We Should Have Known!

Things were going way too well.  We left Vero at 7:30 and the water on the Indian River was like glass all the way to Stuart.

My vote for photo of the day.  The water so calm on the Indian River which is about
3 miles wide you could see the reflection of the clouds at 11 am.

Plan A: (1st mistake, making one) was to get to the Port Mayaca lock, which is the gateway to Lake Okeechobee, today so that we could cross the lake bright and early tomorrow while we had calm seas.  The controlling water level in the lake is only 4.77 feet ....the controlling level being the shallowest on the route. and we draw 4.6. The lake level itself is about 10.6 feet but there are two dicey spots...getting into the lake and getting back out on the west side. You don't want to chance this in wind, since the lake is so shallow the wind itself can change the water levels so you don't want to get caught in any storms.  Storms are usually in the afternoon so we want to get across in the am.

Back to the plan..... B that is.  As we came into the Okeechobee Waterway at about 2:15  from the St. Lucie River we passed a boat going East.  Gary hailed them and asked them if they'd crossed Okeechobee and how the depths were.  They said no problems just be careful and go slow at the trouble spots. (Like we go anything BUT slow!)   When Gary said "We are hoping to cross early tomorrow morning".....when the guy came back on and said "You do know that the St. Lucie Lock is on a 7-1-7 schedule?"  Uh....no!!!  I immediately called the lock and contrary to the info given on the Corp of Engineers website they are on a reduced schedule. We had talked to the lock earlier in the day and they weren't giving out that info either. That meant we had to hang on the dolphins ( the big clusters of piling used by the commercial traffic) for 5 hours and hook up to them again on the other side of the lock to spend the night.

The St. Lucie Lock

The Dolphins....and not the cute kind.

I must pat myself on the back....I hooked these lines up all by myself....all the things I think I can't do....guess what....I CAN!!

So here we sit....through a dandy of a thunderstorm which thankfully cooled things off a little but will probably bring the bugs out in force at dusk....since this is pretty much a mangrove lined ditch crossing the state of Florida., Plan B is now to sit on the dolphins on the west side of the lock tonight and leave "when the sparrows fart" (a new nautical saying we've picked up) tomorrow and hope the weather is cooperating to get us across.  If not we will be sitting on another set of dolphins tomorrow night.  Oy Vey!!

And as you can see by the following pictures the Vultures are checking us out to see if possibly they can get lucky!  That's why I'm inside doing the blog....fool the vultures.    

Stay tuned for more tomorrow!!!