East bound and down

We are under way across Lake Okeechobee, headed back to the east coast after our month-long west coast side trip. We've already had a few 90+ days over the last week or so, and the time is nigh to start heading northward toward cooler climes. We'll be out of Florida well before our insurance-mandated deadline of June 1.

Not long after my last post, we arrived back at the Boca Grande inlet, more or less at max ebb. I was happy to have the current against me as I navigated the skinny swash channel from the north, and once in the deep water of the inlet, I took advantage of the ebb to do the day's run-up to 80% engine power, something I do once or twice each day to minimize wet-stacking and coking of the turbocharger.

That had us dropping the hook at our usual Cabbage Key anchorage (map) just a tad before 6:30, and we were only a few minutes late for our dinner reservation. The place was much more crowded on a weekend evening than it was on our last visit, but we were seated near the screens on the patio as we requested, and they are blocking off every other table for spacing.

This sunken boat at the Fort Myers Yacht Basin was a sad sight.

We really dislike moving the boat around this part of Florida on a weekend, as the traffic is miserable, and it's amateur hour, with lots of day boaters who have no clue about the rules of the road, using the radio, or courtesy in general. So we were hoping to just hunker down for a second night in the same spot. But by mid-morning the wakes of passing boats were more than we could put up with, and we reluctantly weighed anchor to move along.

Short of going a long way out of our way, there really aren't any comfortable anchorages along this stretch of the Gulf ICW where the wakes would be any better, and so we grit our teeth and pushed back through the Miserable Mile and up the beginning of the Okeechobee Waterway to Glover Bight in Cape Coral, where we dropped the hook more or less right where we stopped in the other direction (map). We had already planned on eating aboard, so we did not even bother to drop the tender.

With our next stop being Fort Myers, I contacted our friends Kristina and Atle aboard Summer Star, who had left St. Pete a few days ahead of us and were spending a few days at Legacy Harbour marina, hoping to get together. Between errands Tuesday and an early departure Wednesday, all they had available was lunch on Monday, and so we weighed anchor first thing Monday morning for the two hour trip to the Fort Myers anchorage.

That had us arriving at nearly low tide, but we made it through the shallow channel to the anchorage with a foot under the keel. Between offloading the batteries and the amount of fuel we've burned, we were a ton lighter than on our last visit, giving us a bit more clearance. We dropped the hook north of Lofton Island, near our last spot (map). We tendered ashore and had a very nice two-hour lunch with them at Capone's Pizza, which was quite good.

One of our neighbors in the anchorage moved his boat twice during our stay, both times just drifiting with the current and paddling at his stern. He never started an engine.

When we go out for lunch, we have our typical lunch at dinner time instead. With dinner, or sometimes at cocktail hour, Louise has been drinking a fancy mocktail comprising seltzer, cranberry juice, and a squeeze of lime. We've been making the seltzer on board using our SodaStream, which we bought before our first Bahamas cruise. On this evening, the SodaStream made a loud popping noise, followed by hissing, followed by nothing. Louise was disappointed.

After dinner I tore into the machine, to discover that the hose that connects the CO2 bottle to the injection nozzle is secured at each end with a plastic fitting, and one of the fittings simply blew in half. Research revealed this to be a common problem, and, SodaStream, wary of anyone messing around in the high-pressure innards of the machine, will not sell the hose and fittings as a replacement part. I found one recommendation for a work-around, but it involved parts I did not have on hand.

Fort Myers has two hardware stores within e-bike distance, and I made plans to go hunting for parts Tuesday. Mindful of our horrible experience with midges on our last visit, I disconnected our festive string of decorative lights before dusk, though we were hopeful that the midge hatch had already passed by.

Alas, it was not to be, as morning found thousands of them on the aft deck and flybridge. I hoovered most of them up with the shop vac in the morning before heading off on my hardware quest, but it gave us pause in contemplating staying beyond another night. Sadly, I could not find the exact parts I needed in town, and the substitute items I found instead did not do the job. I was, however, able to pick up some club soda at the grocery store to tide us over while the machine is down.

What the broken part looks like. I forgot to take a photo, so I stole this one from the Internet; that's how common it is. Photo: Stefan Väänänen

We returned ashore in the evening for dinner along the very vibrant First Street downtown. Possibly too vibrant: several of the places that looked to be nice venues for dinner had their tables much too closely spaced and were very crowded. We ended up picking a place that was far less busy and soon learned why, as the food and service were both lackluster. Still, we enjoyed sitting on the street and taking in the festive atmosphere, from a safe distance.

Yesterday morning with another thousand midges on the deck (after spending the evening with all the interior lights doused, using our laptops by way of USB keyboard lights), we hoisted the tender and headed to the Yacht Basin for a pump-out before leaving town. That took over 45 minutes because they could not get the pump-out working -- someone left a valve open someplace. The city marina is a marginal operation. One boat was sunk in its slip when we went ashore Monday, and it was even lower in the mud by Wednesday as we were leaving, and there was not even a spill boom around it.

Between the unexpected delay at the pump-out, and just missing an up-lockage at Franklin lock, we had a mad scramble to make it to the Ortona lock before the last lockage at 4:30. Our plan had been to anchor in the pool just upstream of the lock, an anchorage we've used successfully in the past. We made the lock right at 4:30 and were at the anchorage at 5pm.

That turned out to be just when the leading edge of a line of thunderstorms was hitting. We were setting the anchor just as the front hit. And in order to put out enough scope in this 30'-deep anchorage to handle thunderstorm conditions, we were swinging out into the channel. Not a big deal with the lock closed for the night, but it would have meant moving the boat first thing in the morning, before the arrival of any downbound traffic.

Burning sugar cane field, as seen from the lake.

We opted instead to pull the anchor right back up and head another two hours upriver to the city docks in Moore Haven. We ate dinner under way and arrived at 7:10, a half hour before sunset. While the River House docks right next door were full to the brim, the city docks were empty and we tied up along at our pick of pedestals (map). The city rate of $1/foot includes power and water, and we took advantage to get the laundry done, charge our batteries, and fill the water tank.

I also took advantage of the city water this morning to rinse the midge poop off the parts of the boat that did not get cleansed by the thunderstorms. I wasn't able to get it all in the limited time and without doing a full soap-and-water wash, but I got the worst of it. Afterwards I walked across the street to City Hall to pay for our stay before we dropped our lines.

We dropped lines just in time to have to hover for 15 minutes waiting on the railroad swing bridge. A tank train behind a pair of US Sugar Company locomotives rolled across slowly. US Sugar is the dominant force in this part of the state; right now off the starboard side I can see a huge plume of smoke rising from one of the cane fields being burned.

Tonight we'll be anchored in the waterway on the other side of the Port Mayaca lock, and tomorrow we'll make the downhill run to Stuart, where we have a number of errands. From there we will begin making our way slowly north, lingering in Florida until Louise's second Pfizer shot, after which we will be free to zoom north should we get a good weather window.