Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Day 4 Clewiston to Stuart, FL

 The crew was up early today for a 7 am departure.  Due to the continuing drought in FL the locks around Lake Okeechobee are operating on a 2 hour schedule.  Soon the lock schedule will change to only three lockages per day.  We needed to make the St Lucie Lock by 1 PM so we left the marina and headed 30 miles across the lake, early in the morning the winds were calm.





 We entered Port Myaaka lock at 9 am. We had to be careful of 2 Manatees in the lock. Below the lock we entered the St Lucie  Canal which at times is a ditch before it joins the St Lucie  River.  Typical section in picture on right.

Looks like this sailboat could use a little TLC.  
 Lots of farm land adjacent to the canal. Horses and cattle were seen enjoying the water. Nice having Island Hopper in fresh water for a few days.  Engines flushed themselves of salt!
We had to crawl to arrive at the St Lucie Lock by 1 pm.  We could not make it by 11 am so we slowed to 6 mph to time our arrival for 1245 pm.   We are leaving the lock in the picture on the right.  The lock lowered us 8 feet,  Much less than the 35 feet we are used to on the Ohio River.

We arrived at Stuart, FL Sunset Harbor Marina at 230 pm. We took on fuel and moved to our assigned slip for the evening. First class marina.  We stayed here before when we were returning to FL from the Chesapeake Bay in 2009.

Miles today 57, total to date 226.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

ok Kev, here's a project. Since you will be blowing by Sea Ray Yacht production facility at Merritt Island in the next day- stop and tell them you are my Attorney that I had drive your boat all the way from lONGBOAT TO CHECK AND MAKE SURE THEY ARE GETTING READY TO SHIP IT TO ME HAHA...cOME on help a brother out lol...only kidding..df