Day 189: Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Port to Port: Belle Glade, Florida to St Lucie, Florida
Underway: 7:19 am Motor Off: 4:03 pm Miles Traveled: 48 Stayed At: Anchor
First Things First: First manually operated swing bridge at Torry Island; first time having ash from the big sugar cane burns falling like black snow around the boat.
Mile 63 to Mile 15: Even though we were tired, we got up predawn so we could get to the next bridge right at 7 am when it is open for the day. This was a pretty unique bridge – a guy from the Fish Camp walks up the road and over the bridge, manually unlatches the bridge, inserts a long pole into a turnstyle and starts manually turning the gears until the bridge opens. I’m pretty sure that gets old after 5 or 10 boats a day. But it moves fast and we were soon on our way to Lake Okeechobee and the St. Lucie River. (FYI: Lake Okeechobee is the second biggest freshwater lake in the US and very shallow).
The morning started perfect for travel. A little cloudy but not threatening. We put up the sails and boosted our speed about 1 mph. For the first two hours of our journey, we had a wonderful passage motorsailing at about 6 mph with the wind on our stern. About a hour before the Port Mayaka Lock at the north east end of Lake Okeechobee, the waves were starting the build up fast and we were only probably 100’ offshore with very little room for error. The waves were skewing Aurora all around and we decided it was time to depower and drop the sails – easier said than done. After an exciting 10 minutes, we settled down a little but the waves were very uncomfortable and we were extremely happy to enter the lock where the water was flat and both doors were open so we didn’t have to wait to lock through. What a relief to be in protected waters again. We even got a nice boost from a little current adding about 1/2 mph down the channel. Except for a little sprinkle mid-afternoon, the day was a great travel day. It’s all downhill to the Atlantic Ocean.
We were originally going to stop and tie up to some dolphins (large pilings made up of 3 or more wood pilings lashed together spaced about 50’ apart) at the Port Mayaka Lock but they were somewhat exposed and it was only 11:30 in the morning – too early to stop – so we decided to keep going. After another long but productive day, we anchored just above the St Lucie lock in a tiny little dead end channel completely protected from the wind. We are excited to get to Stuart and start the next phase of our journey – the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and Atlantic Ocean.
