When Clark critiqued my blog entry last night, he scoffed at my last comment that today would be another long day on the water. I refused to amend my comment. "Wait and see", I said, "we have two locks to get through and that by itself can mean a long day.
It was a chilly 56 degrees this morning, as we made the long walk to and from the marina-provided heads some time before 9:00 a.m. Clark pointed out another Krogen Express 52 in the marina named Dakota Lady. We met the owner of that boat in Marathon last year, so I recognized the name instantly.
On our walk, we also passed by Nauti Anchor and spoke to the owner. Up close I could see the word "News" that between the words "Nauti" and "Anchor". This confirmed my suspicion that the boat owner was a news anchor. It made sense given the boat name. As we stopped to thank the owner once again for his navigation support yesterday, we discovered that it is his wife that is the news anchor on WINK.
We left our dock at 9:40 and just as I threw off the last line a couple walked by and said, "You know there is very little water on the other side of the lock now, right?" "How little is little?", I asked. She thought for a minute and said 13 inches. That was totally unexpected! We need at least four feet.
Clark called the dockmaster who told us to walk over and take a look at the lock and the water. We were already untied, but with no better suggestion, Clark started to back up to look for a place to tie up again. As he did that, I noticed a deep-draft boat heading out and yelled to him about the low water situation. He yelled back, "We need four feet, and we've never had a problem."
Ah! A local! Clark and I decided to follow him to the lock. As he passed Sunset Delight, Clark asked him to give us a report on depth from the other side.
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| Second Chance in lock |
Second Chance locked through and as we waited for the green light to signal our turn, Clark got a call on the VHF radio from them telling us that it looked good on the other side. We locked through without incident although the wind did try to push us forward and then backwards in the lock with no room for such movement. After we had safely exited the lock and traveled a short distance, I asked Clark about the depth. "Depth finder says 0.7 feet of water under the boat", he said. That is not much, but it is enough!
When he spoke to the captain of Second Chance at the lock, Clark asked him to give us a report on the water at the entrance to the marina access off the ICW. As we neared this tricky part of the waterway, Clark spoke to our "guide" who told us to keep to port to avoid the extra skinny water. The high winds had blown out a lot of the water, so it was skinnier than usual. We followed his advice and breathed a sigh of relief at 10:20 when we finally got to the deeper waters of the ICW and had channel markers to help guide us along.
Today, like yesterday, we saw wind gusts up to 35 knots. Clark had hoped that since we would be in a river, we would not have spray coming over the boat. No such luck! We even had one come high enough to spray the upper helm. Even with the rough conditions, when we saw some interesting sights along the ICW, Clark got busy with the camera.
We could make it under most bridges but two we encountered today were impossible for even small boats to navigate through without an opening. The first was a railroad bridge.
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| Railroad Bridge opened for us to pass through |
Later, Clark pointed out some interesting artwork. At first I thought they were dolphins, but Clark said to look at the tell-tale snouts of the manatees. Ahh, right! The sign on the artwork caught my interest, and I later Googled it to learn more of its history. It is the first environmental monument in the world.
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| Manatee Artwork "Homage to the Orange River Valley" |
I expect the view of the solar-powered monument is breath-taking at night. Just down the river from the monument, we spied the Florida Power and Light power station.
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| Florida Power & Light |
In stark contrast, as we continued on, we passed some private homes in a paradise-like setting.
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| Houses along the Caloosahatchee River |
Clark grabbed the camera, told me to take the helm, and said, "Windmill!" The sign on the windmill says "Barringer Family". Besides the windmill, they obviously also have some horses hanging around.
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| "Barringer Family" Windmill |
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| and horse farm |
The wind blew and blew today. I am sure their windmill got a good workout. Wearing long pants, jackets, and hats, we traveled against the cold wind while those traveling with the wind waved to us in bikinis, shorts, and t-shirts. Since they looked like they were out for a day trip, I wondered how they would feel in the summer clothes when they had to travel back the way they came.
Due to reduced speeds at slow-speed Manatee zones and delays for bridge openings, we finally arrived at Franklin Lock, our first lock for the day, at 1:15. Unfortunately, our timing was not good. We had to wait for an east-bound lock to complete and then a west-bound lock-through, before we would have our turn. An hour later we locked through.
The lockmaster handed me a brochure on the Okeechobee Waterway locks, and stressed as she did so that the last time for locking for the day would be 4:30. As we continued along the waterway, I leafed through the brochure and found the page on lock data. The distance listed of 27 miles to the next lock on our journey caused me concern. We had reservations at a marina for the night on the far side of that next lock.
The time already approached 2:30. Doing the math, at 9 knots of speed, we would never cover that much territory and make the last passage through the lock. At first Clark did not believe me. He checked the ICW mile markers and told me I had the wrong information. I persisted so he handed me the iPad to check the mile markers for myself. I came up with 23 miles, but since I raised my concern, we had been traveling for a while.
As such, we started reviewing our options. 1 - find an alternate marina on the west side of the lock, 2 - find an anchorage before the lock, or 3 - "floor it". Clark hated the idea of burning so much fuel. I had said he should go 17 knots earlier, and he had replied "17 knots is crazy" as he continued to travel at 9 knots.
Most of the alternative overnight options were located in Port La Belle where Active Captain showed two free docks at parks, a town dock, a couple of marinas, and an anchorage or two. We surveyed all of these choices as we passed through the town. Given the size of the slips (built for 20-footers) and the predictions of strong winds for the night, none of the choices looked too appealing. I thought Clark might go for one option we saw there, but instead he just kept going.
Looking at the remaining distance to the lock compared to the current time and our speed, I told Clark, "We'll never make it by 4:30." With that he started pushing the throttles forward and then some more and then some more. Then, he used the trim tabs to get more speed. Voila! He had Sunset Delight moving at 16 knots. I worried though that it was too late to make the lock.
We normally burn about 2.5 gallons of fuel per hour per engine. At 16 knots, we were burning 17 gallons per hour per engine. "I'm afraid you're just going to burn the fuel and still not make it on time", I said. I did the calculations over and over to look at distance and speed, converting statute miles to nautical miles. It gave me a headache, and every time I came up short of the 4:30 mark.
Clark decided to call the lockmaster at the next lock to see what he had to say. When he talked to him, Clark told him that two vessels were heading his way to make the 4:30 deadline. While we had been discussing our options, another boat, a sport fish, had come upon us and was making headway fast. Clark figured he had the same objective we did - get through that lock. On the phone, Clark told the lock master we would arrive there as close to 4:30 as possible. Unfortunately, the lockmaster offered no guarantees regarding our chances of getting locked through this evening.
Regardless of our time constraints, the waterway has restrictions that cannot be ignored. We lost precious time when we hit several "slow speed" zones and even more when we had to wait for a bridge opening. As we passed through the swing bridge, the tender saw Clark taking her picture and started talking to him. When we exited the other side, she yelled to us to "Have a great day!"
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| Swing Bridge - bridge tender in center of picture on part that rotates |
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| View down road as we passed through opening of swing bridge |
A short while later, we heard the sport fish boat called the Ortona lock master requesting "a ride". We had no idea how far behind that boat we were as he was traveling at faster speeds than we were. With that call, we worried that he would get locked through, and we would not make the locking. I was very glad that Clark had called ahead. At least the lock master knew we were coming.
As soon as feasible, i.e. in hearing range, Clark called the lock master on the VHF radio and said we would be arriving shortly in hopes that he would be motivated to wait for us. We were ever so close now. Even as the terrain flew by, I still worried that we would not make it. With every bend in the waterway we passed, I hoped to see the lock on the other side. Finally we arrived at the lock and saw that the sport fish boat was just entering and finding his position on the lock wall.
Our watches showed 4:25 as we entered the lock. I was amazed! After fighting the wind as we rose up 12 feet in the lock, we exited the lock at 4:50. As we exited the lock, we saw three boats waiting to be locked through in the westerly direction. It annoyed Clark to see that they would be allowed to lock through "after hours". "I'm confused", he said, "how can they be locking through now?" He did not like burning so much fuel to get there by 4:30 only to find the 4:30 cutoff being ignored for other boaters.
C'est la vie! In the end, we had an expensive ride, but we got to a safe haven for the night in return with appropriately-sized dockage and protection from high winds. Had we stopped in Port La Belle, I expect we would have had a rather sleepless night as we worried about lines tied at too-small piers or anchors dragging in the wind.
We pulled into the marina some time before 5:30. After tying up for the night, Clark pulled out the hose to wash off the worst of the salt spray from today's wild ride. First we had spray from the winds and waves in the river and then we had spray from the speed of our travels.
What a day! Since we spent almost 8 hours traveling today, I think my comment that today would be another long day was "right on the money"! Whenever locks are in the picture, all bets are off regarding travel times. More locks tomorrow! Oh joy!
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