Okeechobee Waterway

I bought my boat in Lantana, FL. This town is on the east coast of Florida, just south of West Palm Beach. I needed to get the boat from there to where I am going to keep it in Punta Gorda, FL which is on the west coast (just north of Fort Myers if you are looking at a map).

The best way to get from the one spot to the other is the Okeechobee Waterway. This system of locks and rivers runs east-west through the middle of Florida. It starts near Stuart on the east coast (about 45 miles or so north of Lantana) and ends in Fort Myers. It runs through the middle of Lake Okeechobee which is a very large lake sitting in the south central part of the state.

I did some fancy talking and was able to get my cousin Jimi to agree to go with me on this trip (expected to take 3 days). We had some company driving over to Lantana: my Aunt Mary (Jimi's mom), her husband Bo, and Jimi's daughter Arrielle. Mary went with us to take a look at the boat and to drive my car back to the west coast.

This adventure started on Saturday morning, Oct 25. This trip didn't start off too well. After stopping for a restroom break in a small town on the way there I got into an auto accident. Some gal was I backed into each other at a gas station. Technically she was at fault since she was back out of a parking space while I was already in the roadway, but the damage was minor and nobody was hurt. Still... not exactly the way I wanted to start a three day journey.

Anyhow, we got to Lantana and started working on the boat. We had to provision it which meant a run to the nearby supermarket, and we had to throw a lot of items out of the boat that had been there a while (old food, trash, etc). I had my charts and some other guides to the waterway. Around 4pm Jimi and I finally cast off and we started motoring up the Intra Coastal Waterway (ICW) towards Stuart.

10 minutes after casting we went under the first of many bridges. The bridge height was listed as 35'. Since my mast height is 31', and the previous had told me owner VHF antenna extended the mast to 34', we still had a foot clearance. Scary, but not a problem. The only snag is that the previous owner clearly didn't know what he was talking about. My antenna hit the bridge.

Argh! As we are passing under the bridge Jimi is looking up. "Hey. We hit the bridge." I wasn't sure if I heard him right so I looked myself. Sure enough, the antenna smacks a girder underneath the bridge. By this point its really too late to stop, so I try turning right where the bridge appears to have a tad bit more clearance. No help. On the last girder a 3 foot section of antenna splits off and falls into the water. Sigh. I feel sort of like Malcom Reynolds in the movie Serenity when a chunk of his ship falls off.

There's still a good 2-3 feet of antenna atop the mast and we can hear radio chatter. While this incident may have affected some range it appears to be minor and no reason to stop the trip.

We pass several more bridges without sinking or damaging the boat.

Because we got started so late, night came much earlier than I wanted. Darkness, combined with rain that came in intermittent bursts, was starting to make travel very difficult. After the sun went down Jimi had to take a flash light forward to see if he could hit the reflective channel markers so we could find our way up the ICW. We finally decided that it would be best to call it a night when we found a marina that had transient slips. It was almost 9pm when we finally arrived at one.

When we arrived at the marina entrance, it was hard to tell what to do. It was somewhat marked, but it was narrow and very hard to see. We decided to dock at a restaurant near the marina. We figured if we had something to eat at this restaurant, then they wouldn't mind if we parked the boat there while we walked to the marina and checked it out. This turned out to be a pretty good move. We were a little surprised they let us in as most of the patrons were really well dressed, and Jimi and I were wearing wet shorts and shirts. But they did. They had excellent fish chowder and a shrimp appetizer that Jimi and I split.

There are several minor injuries and funny stories to be told about here, but I think I'll just say that we finally were able to dock at a slip, get some sleep, shower the next morning, refuel the boat, and move on.

Sunday we made some good time as we sailed up the ICW. This part of the ICW is very picturesque, with million dollar mansions lining both sides of the waterway as we made our way to Stuart.

Stuart is the point where, if we continued north on the ICW, we could eventually go all the way to Chesapeake Bay, or we could hang a left and hit the Okeechobee Waterway. Hang a left we did. The bay we entered was absolutely nuts. Some parts of the waterway were so shallow that my depth finder was telling me we were water only 4'6" deep. Since my boat requires 4'3" before it goes aground my knuckles were white as a tried to follow Jimi's directions to the next channel marker.

We finally passed through that watery hell, stopped for some fuel, and then continued down the waterway to the first lock.

Locks, in my opinion, are insanely incredible human inventions. St. Lucie Lock raised us almost 8 feet. I think I have a couple pictures included of us entering or leaving a lock (we were both a little too busy for a camera while at the lock). For those that have never seen a lock, here is how it works in a nutshell. When the front doors are open we sail in and the lock employee directs us where to tie up. There are lines in the lock that we grab and loop around cleats on my boat. Then the front door closes and the back door opens and water comes flooding in (at a controlled, reasonable rate) until the water level inside the lock is the same as other side. The water is pumped out after we leave so he can open the front door for the next boat.

The locks are big enough for 3-4 boats and, of course, service traffic in both directions on the waterway, so its a tad more complicated than I describe above, but you get the picture.

From St. Lucie lock to the Fort Mayaca lock (which is the lock connected to the Okeechobee Lake) there really wasn't anything terribly interesting to write about (I am skipping the totally frustrating part were we got attacked by 20 million midges). The sun had set before we reached Fort Mayaca lock so we decided to tie up to some pilings for the night at the lock's entrance.

This turned out to be an incredibly great move.

The next morning (Monday) we were up early and through the lock by 7:15am or so. Okeechobee Lake is huge. There was lots of wind. With huge bodies of water and lots of wind comes really rough water conditions. We were getting 3-4' swells, coming very quickly, with so much wind that a lot of the swells were breaking. It would have been a nightmare trying to tie up to a piling in conditions like this, and we certainly would have gotten no sleep.

Crossing the lake was a very uncomfortable 4 hours.

The rest of the trip was more of the same. Bridges, a couple of locks, and lots of beautiful scenery. For the most part traveling this waterway is very peaceful and relaxing.

Unfortunately, due to various waits bridges and locks, and also the late start we got on Saturday, Jimi and I didn't get to our destination before nightfall and we didn't want to risk navigation errors in the dark. We stopped at a town called La Belle which had a public dock along the waterway. We tied up there and called for family members to come and pick us up. Jimi had to work the next morning and I felt a shower and a comfortable bed was in order.

The next day I drove back (its about a 45 minute drive from Jimi's house in Port Charlotte to La Belle) and finished the boat move to its temporary destination at my cousin Joshua's house which is located right on the Okeechobee waterway. It was only a two hour trip from La Belle to Josh's house and a couple of Josh's employees helped me with the move.

I've resisted the urge to tell a bunch of funny stories because a) I'm tired of typing, and b) you're probably tired of reading. Suffice to say, three days of travel with 2 people who haven't been down the traveled route on "new-to-me" boat creates tons more comical material than I've relayed here.

I have placed some pictures of this adventure on my Picasa site:

http://picasaweb.google.com/danny.agle/OkeechobeeWaterwayTrip#