Slow-rolling toward Christmas dinner

Happy holidays, everyone. As I begin typing we are westbound in the Okeechobee Waterway and the Caloosahatchee River, headed for the west coast and a Christmas dinner reservation. I'm not sure if I will get another post up before the holiday itself.

Nice city tree on the Fort Pierce waterfront.

Last Saturday in Indian Harbour Beach we walked to the shopping center and had a nice dinner at one of our go-to joints, Pizzavola, before hitting the Publix for a two-backpack haul of provisions. That included replenishing the strategic beer reserve, so my pack was laden with two six packs and whatever else would fit. Just in time, as it had just run out.

A sad day, the last Pluff Mud Porter of the trip. But we are now back in Maduro Brown territory.

I know I said we would move to the anchorage south of the causeway Sunday in anticipation of high winds that night, but in the morning we decided to just spring for another night at the yacht club dock. Our first night is free and then we pay club rates for any more nights. That let us walk to a nice breakfast at the Too Cool Cafe just up the street. The club's own stellar Sunday brunch only happens once a month nowadays and this was not the day.

At Too Cool Cafe.

The down day let me get some projects done, including bypassing the water heater's engine coolant loop as part of my ongoing diagnosis of our coolant problem. We also took advantage of the very convenient slip-side pump-out system. I had a nice long walk around nearby Gleason Park, where I found the public pool ($4 for a day pass), and we had dinner at the yacht club's own poolside bar. The rest of the club was closed for a private event, a past commodore's birthday party, and there must have been 250 guests.  At 6:30 there was a private fireworks show for the party that rivaled municipal shows we've seen elsewhere; we had just finished eating and stepped away from our table to take it in. Later I saw just a small bit of a rocket launch through the cloud layer.

These tortoises were everywhere at Gleason Park.

We often linger at docks until checkout, to take full advantage of supplied power, but with the extra day we had done all we needed, so we dropped lines at 9am to make Fort Pierce by dinner time. It was a drippy, windy day, with moderate chop on the ICW, so we had it mostly to ourselves. We had the anchor down in a familiar spot (map), where the boat makes odd "loops" as it swings; we prefer to be a few hundred feet further east if there is room. We bashed our way ashore at the city dock and had a nice dinner at the 2nd Street Bistro, which is a noisy sports bar but makes up for it with a large draft selection.

I soon learned why.

Fort Pierce was our decision point for continuing south, where will will find more Lugger dealers if we need one, or turning west per our original plan before we discovered our slow coolant leak. At this point in the process I had just changed out the water heater for a piece of hose, and we've been circulating UV dye marker for a few days. But the reality of this kind of hard-to-find leak is that it will take many days of running the engine to move the diagnosis further along. We decided to stick to the original plan, and the worst case, if a Lugger-specific specialist is required, is that we will have to pay travel time.

Sunset over Dragon Point from dinner.

With that decided, Tuesday we weighed anchor, headed down the ICW and made the right turn at The Crossroads onto the St. Lucie River. We made it through the FEC railroad bridge with just a couple of minutes to spare before it closed for a Brightline train. We had the hook down in our usual spot off Arbeau Point (map) in enough time for me to go ashore for a walk down to the shopping center and back.

The fireworks over the Banana River were spectacular.

We had already bade farewell to Dorsey and Bruce on Esmeralde back in St. Augustine, but we're all headed to Key West via the west coast, and we caught back up to them here in Stuart. They were booked while in town, but were generous to allow us to have our mail sent to their marina, and I swung by the office there and picked it up on my way home. We returned ashore together in the evening and walked downtown for a nice Italian dinner at one of our favorites, Luna.

I took lots of photos, but you get the idea.

As soon as we made the decision to continue to the west coast, I started working on where we could find the traditional holiday flavors for Christmas dinner. I was hoping that Cabbage Key, one of our regular stops and a hotel itself, would be doing something for the holiday. While they would be open, and were happy to take a reservation, it would be the regular menu at the regular time (after 6). I booked, "just in case."

The Falcon-9 launch, by contrast, was anything but spectacular. Also delayed by two hours.

Eventually I landed on the Westin Hotel in Cape Coral, whose Marker 92 restaurant is doing a holiday buffet with all our favorite flavors. It was spendy, but they have a courtesy dock and there is a nice anchorage right there. Altogether a perfect combination, and I booked us for 4pm. It does, however, give us a few extra days to kill along the way, and so we are slow-rolling it.

We passed the fireworks aftermath on our morning walk. I'm sure my pyro friends can guess the $$.

That let us decide to just spend an extra day in Stuart. In the afternoon we went ashore together for a walk and wandered by Esmeralde at the dock just to say hi. We had a nice visit for the better part of an hour and said another goodbye till Key West. We returned ashore in the evening for dinner at The Gafford downtown, another of our favorites. We were taken aback to see a large police presence on the waterfront, we suspect just a show of force for the Hanukkah menorah lighting, in light of several high-profile incidents elsewhere.

Stuart had a lovely tree. The menorah is behind it and down the steps to the waterfront amphitheater. The giant "bulb" in front of the tree rotated through various colors.

Even having decided to slow-roll, we got a very early start out of Stuart on Thursday, because high tide was at 8:30 and we wanted to be over the shoals between Stuart and the lock before the tide was headed back down. We ended up in the St. Lucie lock right behind Esmeralde. The former lockmaster, perhaps the world's rudest, thankfully no longer works here. The 7:45 start put us at Port Mayaca before 1pm.

Huge police presence for the sunset menorah lighting. It made me sad.

Normally we have to stop at Port Mayaca westbound, because we usually can not get all the way across the lake in the daylight. But today was the exception; if we kept going we would be in Clewiston just before 5pm, in time to go ashore for dinner at the tiki bar. The alternative of a 1pm stop on the dolphins at Port Mayaca would mean running the generator in the afternoon, and basically being trapped on board, and so we opted to just continue on through the lock. They opened the gates at both ends and we drove right through.

Esmeralde ahead of us in the St. Lucie lock. They fill these locks by cracking open the tainter gates and you can see the water pouring in ahead of them.

The lake was actually fairly choppy, but we had a full foot more depth than our last crossing, in the other direction. Still, at this level, I do not cut any corners. We picked up a little speed in the lake and were tying up to the Clewiston dolphins (map) by quarter to five. We splashed the tender right away to head ashore, as I wanted to get gas before the fuel dock closed (late, it turns out).

Approaching Port Mayaca lock with both gates open; you can see right out to the lake.

Esmeralde also stopped in Clewiston for the night, tied up at the marina. When they heard we were headed this way they set aside their cooking plans and agreed to meet us for dinner at the cheesy tiki bar, Scotty's, which we hit well before Karaoke was scheduled to start at 7. This notwithstanding that we've already said goodbye three times. While we were eating, a dozen police motorcycle officers from several departments came in and sat down, probably on a training exercise, but we all wondered if they were going to sing. The fare was actually decent, there were far fewer bugs than our last visit, and the company was superb.

After a half dozen or so meals together, we finally remembered to take a picture.

Starting our Friday in Clewiston meant Moore Haven was too soon to stop, and just as well because the city dock has increased its rates to $2/foot, which is definitely not worth it in this town unless we are desperate for power or water for some reason. So after locking down at the Moore Haven lock we proceeded all the way downriver to Ortona Lock, where we considered anchoring with a tender option to the Ortona Tavern. We arrived at just 2pm, and decided to lock through and continue on to LaBelle, where there is more "there" there.

Vector tied between two of the Clewiston dolphins, as seen from Esmeralde as she passed us. Photo: Dorsey Beard

LaBelle is a sleepy town and normally we have no trouble dropping the hook here off-channel with some protection from the bridge. But this time "our spot" was occupied by a sailboat, and so were our second and third choice spots. We ended up further downriver of the bridge, where our first attempt had us too close to the sailing line, and we weighed and moved until we were just a boatlength off the right descending bank (map). A strong southerly would have had us grazing the shore, but we thought that unlikely.

Both Ortona and Franklin locks had broken gates and we had to pass through just the working side. That's a 25' opening, leaving me just 4½' of slop on each side.

We tendered ashore at the city dock and walked to the Forrey Grill for dinner. I think of this place as mostly Italian, and I was prepared to order a red sauce dish, but after we were seated at the bar we learned Friday is prime rib night. We shared a single 14oz portion, which comes with the salad bar, and just added another side salad. It was pretty good for a place that does not bill itself as a steakhouse. We had a calm night and never came close enough to the channel to warrant burning more lights overnight.

Hay, Santa. Seen on Bridge Street in LaBelle.

Update: we are anchored in the Caloosahatchee River, just east of the Wilson Pigott Bridge (map). Regular readers may remember we anchored here earlier this year to meet up with friends at The Boathouse restaurant here, after a nail-biting trip from Fort Myers with the engine overheating. From LaBelle we would normally go all the way to Fort Myers, another ten miles downriver, but we are now very early for our plans at Glover Bight. With a decent restaurant here we decided to break the trip into two days. With a short day planned, we went ashore this morning at Mason Park on the north bank in LaBelle for a nice walk.

Passing the LaBelle library, next to the city dock, filled with children for an event. We liked the "tree."

We should be in Fort Myers tomorrow for a couple of nights, where, if the stars align, we might connect with friends. I'll make a pilgrimage to the Publix for pre-holiday provisions, and if the lagoon stays calm enough, we will enjoy going ashore for dinner at any of the myriad nice eateries in town. We then have one night booked at the St. Charles Yacht Club, which unfortunately will otherwise be closed, right before the holiday, before we settle in to Glover Bight on Christmas Eve. I am hoping we find a nice place for dinner that is different from Marker 92, where we will have Christmas.

I will leave you with six seconds of frenetic dancing holiday lighted palm trees at the waterfront park in Fort Pierce. Apart from a wimpy sound system, the lights were very well done and set to a variety of holiday music. Sorry about the wind noise.