Up the Okeechobee Waterway

We moved faster today coiling up the electric cables and dropping lines as we prepared to leave our dock. There was plenty of sunshine in the cloudless sky but the wind with the temps in the low 50s made it almost painful outside! However, on the bridge we were glad we had not put on the long underwear as it was plenty warm. I ended up having to move to the bench seat in the shade behind the Captain as I was cooking riding in the sun next to him. A few large boats passed us but this one gave us a moment or two of fear......it was a very large Hatteras and he was moving all over the Waterway. Maybe when he came around the turn and saw us it spooked him but he went from one side of the canal to the other...we were glad to be past him!

We passed lots of cattle land today. For over 500 years Florida's economics has been helped by the Cattle Industry. This industry owns over a million cows, heifers and bulls. The breeding herd values are over $847 million and calves are valued at an additional $200-350 million.

This is the Ortona Lock and it was broken! Yesterday, Looper friends had to wait two hours as the problem had just been discovered......one gate door would not open. The first thing the Lock Master wanted to know was our beam size...width of our vessel.

Here we are tied with a small boat ahead of us.

This shows the way they “flood” the locks and the reason I was first a bit nervous about going across the state...you can see they just open the door slightly and let the water flow in creating some turbulence. Not bad at all compared to other situations we have been in during this amazing trip. 

Only one side of the gate would open......plenty big for us but we wondered about that huge Hatteras that we passed.

We have just discovered that there is yet another lock to go through before we cross the lake so it will be a total of 5 locks, two on other side of the lake, before we reach the East coast of Florida.

We passed a forest of sail boat masts...all on dry land.

We thought this strange in Florida to see so many on land and not ready to sail....... unless it has just become too cool for open cockpit type boats in the winter down here???

Then we were off the Calaloosahatchee River and into the Calaloosahatchee Canal which was dug to complete the waterway to the Lake. Many barges use to carry produce & oil to power plants and other products across Florida on these routes. Can you see the smoke faintly showing up on the right of the waterway?

As we neared our destination this is what we saw......This building is NOT on fire.

Neither is this tree.

Turns out we were passing acres and acres of sugar cane. They burn the leaves off the sugar cane plant to make it easier to harvest the long canes.  I was glad the wind was blowing away from our dock.

In Moore Haven there were many buildings that were boarded up...almost like a ghost town.

Yet, the dock area looks new and is very nice.....

We were the second boat to arrive today.  We were greeted by our friends from the motor vessel Journey. Loopers! So fun to see them again...Tom & Melesia caught our lines and we had a long chat before we decided to walk a mile to BurgerKing..... really the only restaurant here and I just wanted a whopper with the works... I will eat healthy again...... "tomorrow is another day"!

Here Walter is helping a Katy Krogen (nice boat make!) tie up..there are now four boats on the dock.

There is a small lovely park here.

A new library across from the docks....

with free Internet that works here on dock....most of the time.  We have electric (praise God as it will be 38 tonight! Yikes!) water and showers....but who is traipsing across the grass to a shower in this weather?!  And it is only $1/foot for dockage.  Wahoo!

Picnic tables beside the dock.

Miss gg

We will try to get an earlier start tomorrow to go through a lock, then about 10 miles to lake, cross the lake, about 21 miles and another 8 miles to our dock.  

Look out East Coast...here we come!...I'm hoping our “playmates” (friends that wanted to travel with us) will be well and ready to share our Adventure.  It won't be long before we will be saying, “Permission to come aboard”!  Are you taking those extra Vitamin C's?