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| Cruising on Indigo Star on Florida's east coast |
We started off the day after Easter on Monday, April 17. We had gorgeous cruising weather as we headed down Charlotte Harbor to the Intercoastal Waterway south to Fort Myers. We stayed at our first yacht club, St Charles, and enjoyed a dip in their heated pool. Bleu Kitty is along and he went for a walk down the dock on his leach, turning heads as he saunters by. We met two couples on Catalina 350's who had come in from the Bahamas. They mentioned that they saw our "old" sailboat, Eagles Wings, now called Chase. Unbelievably, it is still "on the hard" in the back of Indian Town Marina!
The next day we traveled down the beautiful Okeechobee Waterway to our first of four locks that we had to traverse, this one being the Franklin Lock. Locking through is really not too hard. You have to pull the boat into a chamber that fills slowly up with water. This one raised us on the river a few feet. After spending the night there, we traveled onto Moore Haven City Dock. This is a little town in the center of the state that is surrounded by farmland. We slept soundly there. At 7 am, we were ready for the opening of the lock that took us to Lake Okeechobee, a huge lake that was easy for us to travel through. It was very calm as we exited the lake, through the railroad bridge that caused us some consternation a few years ago. At that time, we were coming back from the Abacos, Bahamas in our sailboat. We had to wait a long time for Billy the Tipper. Billy is a local guy who put about 9 water jugs on the side of Eagles Wings so that our mast (53-1/2 ft) would tip and get under this bridge. (I believe at that time the railroad bridge was about 49 ft high.)
We locked through our last lock that brought us to the St Lucie River. This was our largest drop in elevation - almost 12 ft! Richard misunderstood the lockmaster thinking that he was supposed to drop the line. Oops! the bow of the boat was almost turned around in the lock. Fortunately, I (Joanne) hit the bow thruster and was able to straighten the boat out before we did any damage to our boat or to others. We breathed a sigh of relief as we patted ourselves on the back that we made it to Stuart on the other side of the state!
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| Posing with boating friends, Mary & Bill Yeomens and John & Marilyn Jorgenson |
We caught a mooring ball (boater language for tying up in the Sunset Bay Marina). We then got our dinghy down and went a few hundred yards to the dinghy dock to then check in at the marina. We pay $30 a night for using the facilities, which is reasonable for the East Coast. Our friends, Marilyn & John were waiting for us at a pretty shaded outdoor porch area. They had white wine and appetizers all ready for us. We had a great time recounting our adventures on the water!
We enjoyed a great Italian diner with them at a local Stuart restaurant. This is a great little town with a wonderful downtown area, full of cute shops, eating areas and of course, ice cream and gelato places! Yum!
Today we traveled a short distance (about an hour) to Harbour Ridge Yacht Club. We are getting our "free night" of luxury here. Everything is gorgeous in this club. We enjoyed a great dip in their heated pool and will eat at their little bistro tonight. Life is great on the water!
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| Displaying our club burgee before enjoying pizza in Stuart |
More...the Yacht Club was great! We had a delicious dinner, swam in their lovely pool and then we cast off and returned to the Sunset Bay Marina because our other boating friends, Mary & Bill were arriving. We all went out for pizza and here we are posing with our club burgee, PGIslander's. We also toured Stuart and enjoyed their little history museum.
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