Touch of Class

The next place we were going to was only 20 miles away so we took our time leaving Rowan Marin Marina, we even had time for breakfast there.  When we finally left, we had to jocky for position in front of the lock.  Of course, the fishing boats all raced to get in as soon as the lock doors were open a few feet.  We held back so we didn’t get run over.  Whoops, now there is no room for us.  Guess we’ll wait for the next lock.  The next one, we went in first.  A couple of fishing boats came in after all the lock walls were full of boats and eyed us up.  I’m thinkin, don’t you try to tie off to my boat.  We had no bumpers down and I was busy holding the line, I couldn’t help them tie off to our boat.  My evil eye must of worked, they went across the lock and tied off to another fishing boat.  Good!

As we cruised down the river, we saw a boat that almost looked like the Chris Craft house boat that we had

Then we saw the Pearson! I love what they did with the upper deck ;).  We saw another sunken boat

Gary got bored so he took a few pictures of our boat

Looking out front window

Looking down into the cabin

 View of the aft section.

As we traveled along I saw these cool windows in this house, very unusual.

We arrived at our final overnight destination, the boat yard.  Very impressive.  They have several kinds of storage options here.  You can have inside, climate control storage, inside storage or outside storage and they strap your boat down on the concrete pad.  You could tell they do a lot of big boat work here.

Our boat with a Kady Krogan in the back ground

No restaurant here so it is time to break out the wieners and Mac and Cheese :).

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 ;).

We left on March 2^nd to go get the new boat.  It was located in Stuart, FL at the sellers house.  Stuart is all the way across the state on the East coast.  We planned to take 4 days to bring it back so we didn’t have to hurry and also so we could check out marinas on the way back.  You know how we like to dawdle.  Our broker Mike insisted on driving us and all our gear to the boat. We had to leave poor Smokie home alone, no cats allowed in Mike’s truck.  I think Mike was a little shocked at the amount of gear we brought.

So after a 139 miles and 3 hours, we arrived at the home of the seller.  The sellers and Mike helped us load all our stuff and gave us a few pointers plus a box of info on the boat.  Mike took some pictures, gave us a couple of bottles of wine and a good shove.  We were off!  It was the first time I had been on the boat with it in the water.  I must say, it felt good to be back on a moving boat again, heading out for adventures!

Our first stop was only a few miles away at Loggerhead Marina.  We wanted a place to spend the day and have time to clean the boat a little and stow our gear, this fit the bill.  Loggerhead was a pretty big marina with condos and it had some pretty big boats

but it also had a fabulous restaurant, cheap, with good food.  When the day was done and our stomachs were full,  we had some of the wine Mike gave us and toasted to our new boat and the adventure of the ride home.

Anybody notice the banner on the website has changed?  Good Morning People!  Yes, we bought the last 2003 Albin we looked at

The boat’s name is Miss Magoo but of course we will be changing it to Touch of Class.  I’d hate to have to start up another blog.  Besides, people snicker when we mention the boat name of Miss Magoo.  We can’t have people snickering about our boat can we?

One of the last places we took the fam to was to a place called Manatee Park.  This is located by a power plant.  The manatee don’t like cold water so when the Gulf water gets below 65 degrees they head over to this power plant where they swim around in the warm discharge water.

Now the Manatee are also known as water cows.  They laze around, don’t move very fast and eat sea grass.  They have a lot of Manatee Zones in the water ways down here.  You have to go no faster than 25 MPH.  No Faster!  You have got to be kidding me, that is pretty darn fast, no wonder these animals are always getting hit by boats.

Anyway, it was pretty cloudy when we were there so my pictures aren’t that great Manatee butt

Baby and Mama

So I pirated a few from the internet, aren’t they cute?

I wanna hold your hand!

Aren’t I just the cutest thing?

I’ll wear my hat today as I am having a bad hair day

Whoops!

Ahhhhh!

Man!  Look at those teeth.  Not so cute and cuddly now are they?

Of course the hi-light of the fam visit was teaching the Grandson to fish in the pool

Real it in, real it in

I got one!

I think I just like playing in the water

Maybe next time we’ll put a real hook on his line for him ;).

We figured we better check out as many beaches as we could so they could get the full Florida experience.  We took the kids first to see the Santa Belle Island.  This is a pretty swanky place, they charge you a $6.00 toll just to get on the island.  I guess that’s to keep the riffraff out.  Too bad it didn’t stop us ;).

Gary and I had visited the island before and did quite a bit of exploration already.  We knew it was a SUPER busy place this time of year and that the one lane in and one lane out could be bumper to bumper, 10 MPH.  There are a lot of very nice bike trails on this island with two different places you can rent bikes from.  The parking can be pretty expensive and fills up fast but we were able to stop at a few beach spots as soon as we came on the island as these weren’t quite as crowded

 Not too cold for dippin the toes 🙂

Another beach we found that we really liked was in Naples, Lowdermilk Park.  You have to get there early but they have grass huts

Grass Hut

This is where I sat all day while everyone else was in the sun

More Toe dippin

People were even doing yoga on the beach

Yoga

Downward Dog anyone?

This guy was covering his wife with sand

Almost done Honey

Just gotta get a little more sand……from China!

Lots of boats going by and people to watch so I was well entertained.  Plus, the coolest part was they had a place where you could go and get lunch and drinks, and the meters….if you entered your phone number you would get a text 10 minutes before your time was due to run out asking you if you wanted to add more time.  If you did, you entered how many minutes and hit send.  It would add those minutes to the meter and charge your credit card.  Way cool!

So, in an effort to take in all the sights they have to offer around here, (trying to show the kids a good time ya know 🙂 ) we visited the Shell Factory.  I thought this was just going to be a bunch of shells for sale but my oh my, they had soooooo much stuff in there.  Shells, lamps, gifts, clothes, a Christmas section where you could watch Santa thru a window!  They also had an arcade, a zoo, turtles in a pond, a live squirrel

Ain’t he cute?

Race cars

Keep it below 100 buddy

Fire trucks

I wanna be a Fireman when I grow up Mama

Even a golf cart made of shells

And did I mention lions and tigers and bears?  How about wild boars

Buffalo

And Bears

Oh my!  Plus they had ice cream, yum!  So all in all, a good place to stop.

We went to a park close to the old homestead today.  As we were looking out over the water we saw another Albin I think someone is trying to tell us something.

As we walked around the park we saw people dressed up in Renaissance outfits  I thought only Minnesota had Renaissance people.  I guess they like the warm too :).

I think there were playing some kind of game with a ball and a stick.  I bet those guys can run pretty fast in those kilts, hee hee.

Speaking of a game with a ball and a stick.  I am sure most of you know that the Twin’s Baseball team have their winter practice down here in Ft Myers.  Well our son-in-law is an avid fan so we went to Hammond Stadium and took a look around.

Now Gary and I aren’t big sports fans of anything.  Gary does enjoy the occasional woman’s mud wrestling ;). We have seen a few Twin’s games in our time so we were somewhat familiar with the concept of Baseball.  I didn’t realize how many players they actually had.  Holy Hoot, no wonder it costs so much for tickets.  There were a lot of guys here practicing.

Or should I say standing around….I am glad we at least got to see them in action doing something instead of scratching and spitting.  Of course I don’t know any of the players so I didn’t know who to take pictures of.  You’ll have to excuse me if I didn’t get a picture of your favorite player.

We had a lot of fun checking it out and it was a very nice place to visit,  who knows, maybe Gary and I will catch a game or two before they head back up north, that is if I can drag Gary away from the water!

In the meantime, while we continue our search for the boat, our kids stopped down for a visit.  Our girl, her husband and their boy flew in for a 10 day visit and our boy drove 26 hours, non-stop, to spend the weekend with us.  What a surprise!  We really enjoyed the visit with the whole fam down here at once.

What a handsome family we are

Did I mention we are going to have another Grandchild this year?  We are very excited!

Of course we had to take them to all the touristy spots.  So the first place we went to was Fort Myers Beach.  We hung around there the first day.  Look at this scary Pirate we ran into

Pirate

Oh, man, he was pretty scary.   He stood there like a statue and then some lady came up to him and he moved, she screamed to high heaven!  Pretty funny.  See the guy in the background to the left?  He weaves hat, bowls and stuff out of palm leaves.  Pretty cool!

They are letting the water out of Lake Okeechobee, which is in the middle of the state, as the water level us unusually high right now.  We have had an unusual amount of rain this winter and it has caused the lake to rise, so in order not to burst the dikes or the dams, they have been letting more water than normal and it is flowing into the Ft. Myers/Cape Coral area.  You can see by the color of the water

Dirty Water

that the water is pretty dirty.   I think it is dirtier than the Mississippi or any other river system we have traveled on.  The people are afraid it will scare away tourist

Lotsa bodies

But from the looks of this packed beach, I think not :).  After all, no mater what the water looks like, it is still warmer than up north!

Of course while we were there, we did a little shopping.  We found a cute hat for Gary

Captain Gary

(This is why I had to have both my kids Cesarean, hee, hee).  I think it fits the Grandson better

What a cool dud ;). We ate dinner at a place called Nervous Nellies.  They had a deck right on the water so we could watch the boats come and go.  The Grandson got a special dessert treat

But I think it scared the crap out of him :).  Us girls thought it was delicious though ;), ummm, fudge, brownies and ice cream.  Yum!

So we decided to take down our lift because no matter what boat we get, the boat will be too big and heavy for our 7500 lb. lift.  We figured we put the $6,000 to $9,000 it would cost to upgrade the lift into a better boat and just leave the boat in the water.  Our canal has brackish water and little to no current so there won’t be as much growth on it as if it were in a more salty or heavy current canal.  Unlike Minnesota where your boat bottom gets all slimy, here you actually get little critter crustations growing on your hull.  So like when we had the boat in Orange Beach, we’ll have to have a diver come and scrape the bottom of the boat a few times a year to keep the bottom smooth.  A smooth bottom makes for a faster and more fuel efficient boat

So we put an ad on Craigslist to sell the lift.  I tell ya, down here you can sell anything on Craigslist, and it is so much easier than in Minnesota.  People want to buy the stuff we have to sell :).  We sold a bunch of the furniture that came with the condo on Craigslist, and we had multiple people trying to buy it.  We were very impressed.  So anyway, it was so easy to sell furniture, we decided to put the lift on Craigslist too.  It sold quickly and we got our asking price.  A guy came over and took it down

Going

Look how that guy goes out on that small thin I beam.  I would of ended up in the water 😉

Going

Gone

So now we just need to find the boat.