We continued our trip to Clewiston the next morning.  We only had about 16 miles and 2 locks to go this morning so we knew we’d have plenty of time.  The first lock was about a mile up the river.  They again raised us about 6 feet but after yesterday, we were ready :).    After we got thru that lock we traveled at our 8 MPH and were able to see the scenery.  Look at the cool things we saw.  We saw our first alligator

Our first

He was hiding in the weeds and kind of hard to see.  We saw a bunch of these birds

Aaauk! Polly want a cracker!

Don’t know what kind it is but it sure has a long neck.  Then we saw some more alligators as we went along 

They looked like big boys to us.  We even saw a few where you could just see their eyes sticking out of the water, but we weren’t fast enough with the camera to get a shot of them.

We went thru our last lock of the day.  That was the really tiny one we went thru last time we were here.  They just left both doors open so we could just drive thru.  We finally arrived at Roland Martin Marina.  It hadn’t changed much since the last time we were there.  But we did move up our location on the dock.  Much closer to the gang-plank going over to the marina buildings and right outside the bar.  Kinda nice, we can hear the music real well.

So we got all settled in and then we got the whole scoop on the lady that fell on the dock. We noticed they had some 2 by 4’s up with yellow caution tape on them.  It turns out she was walking to her boat and tripped on a board that was sticking up.  Some of the docks at these marinas are not real smooth, so you have to watch where you were walking. Anyway, when she fell, she fell on her shoulder and was in so much pain she couldn’t move.  They called an ambulance and they took her to the hospital.  Everyone thought she dislocated her shoulder but turns out she chipped her shoulder-blade, OUCH.  Luckily, one of the bartenders there offered to go pick them up from the hospital.  When they got back, her arm was in a sling and she was feeling no pain, thanks to the wonderful drugs the doctor had given her.  But this gal wasn’t going to be working the locks on the way home.  Now they’ll have to find someone to crew with them to get their boat home.

We also found out that one of the boats, while trying to pass a barge in a narrow area, buggered up his port prop by hitting a dead head.  Oh no, that is 4 out of the 10.  Then another guy is having trouble with his racors.  He thinks he got something in his gas as the gauge on the racor goes into the red (meaning fuel is not getting thru) when he hits it. Good thing he brought some spare filters so he can change them.  Now we are up to 5 out of 10.  Hopefully nothing else goes wrong.

There was a cute little iguana that was doing a little dance to protect his turf

and later he was eating off of his favorite bush

Yum, Yum

He reminded me of Smokie, reaching for a treat

Get that treat Smokie

One of the other boaters offered to help the wounded lady and her husband get their boat back home and then they will drive him back to the marina later.  So off they went.  Some of the people who were left, took a bike ride while we went for a walk.

Huh?

How many people does it take to figure out where we are?

This is where you would come in if you came in off the lake

So we had a nice little walk but when we got back, we found out that there was another casualty, that makes 6 out of 10!  One of the guys on the bike ride sliced his arm on a fence. The guy was on blood thinners so he bled like a stuck pig.  One of the other riders was a retired EMT.  She had her husband rip off the bottom part of his T-shirt so they could use it as a tourniquet until they got back to the boat where they could patch it up some.  Sure, wreck my favorite T-shirt, why don’t you rip yours up to give to the guy :(?  Well, the retired EMT figured the wounded person could use about 6 stitches and a tetanus shot.  Of course you know guys….. yah, yah.  I’ll just put a band-aid on it and I’ll be fine.  I don’t need to see a doctor.  Well after they got back to the boat and he took the make shift tourniquet off, blood spurted all over their boat.  “You’re going to the ER!” says his wife.  Luckily one of the other boaters whose boat broke down traveled there by car for dinner so they were able to take the guy to the ER.  He ended up with 9 stitches, a tetanus shot and missed our pot luck dinner.  Poor guy.

After dinner, the bar, that was real close to our boat, was having Karaoke night, so a few from the group went up to listen.  We meandered down to our friends boat, further away from the bar, so we could at least have a conversation.  Some of the singers were not very good, no matter how much they drank.

We got back to our boat at 10.  We were leaving early in the morning to travel back with the guy that buggered up his prop and had to go slow.  I tried to sleep but the Karaoke singers were so loud and some so bad they made my ears bleed.  I couldn’t fall asleep till they finally quit at 11.

We left early in the morning

Sun Rise

Pink sky in the morning, sailor’s take warning.  It was foggy too

But none the less, a beautiful morning to be heading back.  We again traveled about 8 MPH.  The boat we were traveling went traveled at his slow speed, 10 MPH.  We had to plane off every now and again to catch up to him.  Going thru the locks this time was much better as they were letting the water out instead of letting it in.  We did see our final alligator of the trip right as we came out of the 2nd lock

Peek!

See him hiding on the little island?  We did see another tow.  This time they were pulling a boat instead of pushing a barge   The boat they were pulling had people on it and was a piece of crap.  We figured they must be using it as some kind of housing for a work crew and were taking them to the next job.  Luckily, we were able to pass them at a wider area of the river  so the boat we were with didn’t have to worry about hitting anything again.  We saw a few interesting things, like this tri-hull sail boat which is actually called a trimaran.

Tri-hull/Tri-maran

And we saw these unusual things on the side of the river 

 They looked like they were putting in rip rap on the shore line.  I’ve never seen anything like them before.  Pretty cool vehicles though.

We parted ways with our buddy boat after we got closer to Fort Myers.  They had their dog they had to walk and we were going to bump up our speed to 18 MPH.  We got home around 3:30.

Well, we had a really good trip.  As far as the boat club goes, I don’t think we’ll be going back to that place any time soon ;).