We were up by 6:30 A.M. raring to go.  We decided to cross lake Okeechobee all in one swoop by cutting directly across the lake.  We had to go thru two locks to get to the lake. We found that the lock etiquette is very different down here than it is on the river systems.  The first one we came to was St. Lucie lock.  We called the Lockmaster, he turned the lock around for us and then just opened the gate.  The light was still red so we didn’t enter, as protocol dictates.  Finally we called him to see if we should enter, he told us he’d give us a “verbal” green and we could come on in.  Then after they let the water in to raise us, we waited for the horn signal that we should go, he just motioned for us to leave.  Ok, so not as strict here huh?  The second lock we went thru had both doors open so we sailed right through.  That was a first.  We got to the lake around noon.  Lake Okeechobee is about 25 miles across but only about 20 feet deep.  We saw a lot of traffic on the lake but everyone was heading East while we were heading West, what was wrong with that picture? On our Garmin software we had on our Ipad, it showed a ship wreck.  Here is what it looked like that is quite a little wreck of something.  I’d hate to hit that at night.

Once we got off the lake, the river was pretty much like the TennTom.  Kind of a ditch

We saw some sunken ships

Sail boat run aground

Sunk at the dock

We also saw some cool looking boats

Very wide sail boat

Another wide sail boat

Nice boat, a lot of canvas

Before we left home, Gary planned out our route, all the locks, bridges and marinas we’d be stopping at.  There was one railroad bridge that Gary didn’t have on his list.  There were no signs or anything to indicate who we should call for a lift.  Luckily there was a boat on the other side of the bridge that had already called them so the bridge was opening for them.  We might have been in trouble trying to call the bridge to get them to open it.  Whew, we dodged that bullet.

As we were traveling along, we came across this sail boat that was getting large blue cans loaded onto their boat

Shady Characters

Hmmm. What is going on here?????

The river ended at a “T” junction.  The marina we had to get to, Rowan Martin Marina, was on the other side of the lock.  So we called the lock.  When the doors opened I was shocked.  I had never seen such a tiny lock before.  We found out it was 78 feet long in the center.  The lock is actually shaped like a boat, so one end is flat and the other end is pointy.  As we pulled in I asked Gary if he thought the Navigator would have fit in there.  He thought it would have been a tight squeeze.

Now that we were past the lake, the locks would be dropping us down.  In order to lower us, they opened the front doors and just let the water drain out.  That was pretty funny.

There were mostly small fishing boats in the lock with us and again, etiquette was thrown to the wind.  As soon as the gate, and they only opened one gate, opened, the fishing boats were fighting to be the first one out.  Gary and I hung to our ropes waiting for the OK from the Lockmistress.  She had to holler at someone and told them someone was still in the lock and for them to wait.  She then told us it was OK to leave.  I told her we were used to waiting for the horn.  She told me “Oh we’re pretty casual here, no horns”, so we left the lock and went to our dock where we were met by Captain Sam.  He put us on the very end of the dock, a perfect fit by the way, and told us he had 400 feet of boats coming in.  Gary and I figured they were having a fishing tournament or something.  So we tied up and went to the restaurant for a beer.  As we were sitting there drinking our beer, this huge crew boat came thru the lock

53 foot crew boat

Oh man!  How did that fit into the lock?  As we sat there bigger and bigger boats kept coming thru the locks.  Then the biggest boat of all came thru

Can you see his freeboard is taller than the height of our boat!  Holy Hoot!  When this guy left, he had to put a LARGE bumper to cover his two anchors in front and he put another huge bumper on each corner of his swim platform.  Then he backed into the lock so he’d fit.  We once had one of the bigger boats in the marina we visited and now ours is one of the smallest.  It is pretty comical ;).