14-15 September 2018: Patience, Grasshopper. Patience.

14-15 September 2018: Patience, Grasshopper. Patience.

Sometimes boating is an adventure of a lifetime, and sometimes boating is a lesson in patience.  After yesterday’s necessarily short run, we had wanted to get a sunrise start on the day to make as much distance as we could.  Sweetwater Yacht Basin is very noisily located just to the west of the Wilson Pigott Bridge.  From the sound of it, the Wilson Pigott Bridge carries a veritable freeway of traffic, but it is much more likely to be just a busy arterial.

 

Just as the sun peeked over the horizon, we were ready to cast off.  We radioed the bridge to request an opening:

 

A:  Wilson Pigott Bridge, this is Adventuress.  We’re on the west side travelling east, requesting an opening.

 

WPB:  Sorry Captain.  We’ve got some sort of power issue.  I can’t open at this time.

 

A:  Do you know when you’ll be able to open?

 

WPB:  Sorry Captain.  I’ve got maintenance working on it, but we don’t have a time.

 

So, for the moment, we’re stuck.  And as if to really throw a little mud in our eye, as we stood on the bow of Adventuress grinding our teeth in frustration, a BAG made its way under the bridge.  BAG, you ask?  Big-Ass Gator—like my sized gator. Apparently, one has staked its claim on the territory around the bridge and is seen frequently crossing back and forth.

 

G:  S’up Adventuress?  You should be like me.  I ain’t got no clearance issues.

By 0830 hours, we’d been cooling our jets for over an hour and a half, with no good news from the bridge.  We decided we needed to step down our mast.  We had lost a day pushing from Seabrook a day late, and another day dodging Gordon.  We had made up a day with our marathon push across the Gulf of Mexico, but as it was, Robert was going to have to call his boss and co-workers and tell them he was going to be late.   We couldn’t really afford to lose another day while waiting for the bridge to get fixed.

 

Adventuress’ mast is an antler-like structure is some ten feet, with two eight-foot antennae on top.  It probably weighs somewhere north of seventy-five pounds.  Fortunately, the thing is built to be stepped down, but when the electronics installers stepped the mast down, they had two big burly dudes and a ladder.  We had four cargo bins, some line, one skinny guy, and one little Asian chick who punched above her weight class.   We rigged up the line to take the mast’s weight, and Robert would knock the pin out and lower the mast, while I was on the line to ease the mast down.  On the other side of the bridge, we’d just go in reverse… while floating in neutral in the middle of the channel.

 

We got the mast down without breaking crew or equipment, and then we got the mast back up again on the other side of the bridge without breaking crew or equipment.  Ya-hoo!  Way to go Team Murphy.  I wish I’d gotten a picture, but as we were now only two, we had other things on our mind at the time.

 

Also, thank you Fred Parker for designing Adventuress with a mast that could be folded down!

 

That was all before we’d gotten a single mile done for the day.   The rest of the day we’d be following the Caloosahatchee River upstream towards Lake Okeechobee, which is one of the largest bodies of fresh water in the continental United States.  On our journey upriver, we would lock three times and cross four bridges.

 

The Caloosahatchee River was a test of patience of another sort.  Much of it was wide and deep, but pretty boring.  On this day, the heat soared as the sun came out, and there was very little wind to keep us cool.  We spent the day on the lookout for gators (2) and manatees (0).

 

We did see real cows.  In the water, even.  Doesn’t make them sea cows, though.

COWS. JUST NOT SEA COWS.

The locks and bridges broke the monotony.  The locks on the Okeechobee waterway did regulate elevation, unlike some of the locks in Louisiana, and unlike our own Ballard lock, provided lines.  This, we found out, was not necessarily a good thing.

 

We motored into the first lock, after the lock master told us we had our choice of sides and hooked a lock line.  The last few feet of the line had been submerged repeatedly in water, so it had an awful slimy, muddy coating that splattered the deck with lock grime.  We locked up a few feet and were on our way.

 

The second lock was not as pleasant.  You see, instead of having an internal mechanism of pumps and input or output pipe, the locks in Florida adjusted their water depth by the simple expedient of opening the far door.  The first lockmaster was kind enough to the boats within the chamber to just crack the door a little, so the water came in at a measured pace.  The second lockmaster was not as gentle.  I swear, those doors came open halfway, and we were all but washed along the angry current, struggling with slimy, dirty lines to keep Adventuress’ ass end from swinging out into the chamber.

 

Luckily, just a few days before, I’d figured out how to hang the sausage fenders horizontally to make more of their protective power.  Now, I made use of my innovation to hang two fenders horizontally and protect Adventuress’ fiberglass.

MAD FENDER SKILLS. MAD.

 

We found our marina in Clewiston, from what I could tell, a town that grew up around a lock into Lake Okeechobee.  It had the first floating dock I had seen since starting this adventure but hold on before you call home.  They were saggy and overgrown with swamp weeds.  In the slip across from ours, a heron hunted for fish.   While we were docking, a potbellied white dude came down the dock, which fronted another open-air bar, and watched us tie up, not offering a single iota of help, until his ride on a swamp boat arrived, and he climbed aboard, disappearing in a roar and a cloud of gas-scented smoke.

 

In the morning, Clewiston was one big, damp, swampy mess.  Bugs covered Adventuress, even though we were careful not to leave on any lights outside.  The water had the odor of dog poop strong enough that we were both checking our shoes.  Some creature had pecked a mayo packet on our port side gunwale in the middle of the night, leaving a mayo mess.

 

Right outside Clewiston the Clewiston Lock is Lake Okeechobee.  It is the second largest fresh water lake in the continental United States.  It has a reputation for being temperamental.  It is very shallow, which can amplify wave action and make a crossing difficult.  There are only two navigable ways to cross the lake, unless you have a swamp boat.  The first route is across the lake, and the second route—called the Rim Route—follows the southern shore.  For us, the Rim Route was not an option, as our draft was too deep.

ENTRANCE TO LAKE OKEECHOBEE AT CLEWISTON.

We found that with careful navigation, we were able to keep in the well-marked channel, and away from underwater hazards like The Rocky Reefs. Yes, there were the Rocky Reefs.  I didn’t see the Cliffs of Despair on the chart.  Far from being difficult today, the lake itself was just downright unpleasant.

 

Local news sources had reported that water from Lake Okeechobee enriched by the fertilizer runoff from neighboring agribusinesses contributed to the extraordinary toxic algal bloom that has devastated Florida marine life.  Crossing the lake, it was hard not to imagine that the lake was cursed.  There was no life.  We saw no fish, no turtles, no manatees, no dolphins, no life.  The water was a sickly cheap tea brown, and so turbid you couldn’t see the bottom, even though in many places it was single digits deep.  And it smelled.  Like dog poop.  The smell we first smelled in the morning in Clewiston was the lake, itself.

 

The fact that it was a nearly windless day was somewhat of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, we made the crossing without so much as a wave.  But there was no wind to blow away the millions of mosquitos, gnats, and various other bugs that wanted a piece of me.  I pretty much got eaten alive.  No wind also meant that we stewed in our own sweat.  On the lake, the heat soared and with it the humidity.  It was awful.  There seemed no way to get comfortable.

 

The crossing was twenty-five miles and it couldn’t end soon enough.  The Port Mayaca Lock would close its doors on the festering Poop Lake, and we had some hope that getting off the lake would ease our discomfort.  Not really.

 

We made the remaining miles to the St. Lucie Lock, and then the town of Stuart with only slightly less discomfort.  There was still no wind, but at least the smell was better.  There were fewer bugs, and for some reason more boaters.  We were passed twice in the narrow confines of the canal by boats… on plane.  We got pretty tossed around as the channel amplified and reflected the waves of the wake.

The St. Lucie Lock would be the last lock of this leg of Adventuress’ maiden voyage.  And wouldn’t you know it, it rained on us then, too.  Not a good drenching rain that might be able to cut some of the heat or wash away some of the dead bugs on Adventuress.  Just an annoying rain that made you feel stickier, if that was possible.

 

LEAVING THE ST. LUCIE LOCK… GOOD BYE OKEECHOBEE!

 

At long last, we got to Stuart, which would be where we would tie up for the night.  Stuart sits at the confluence of Okeechobee Waterway, the Intracoastal Waterway, and somewhat beyond the inlet for the Atlantic Ocean.  The water was uncomfortably shallow and the boat traffic heavy.  And, since it was late in the afternoon, the winds kicked up to make navigating tricky.  We eventually found our marina tucked in away in a bend in the waterway, but, by 1800 hours, the staff had all gone home.  The slip we were assigned to was twenty feet too short, and because the dock was being reconstructed after being torn away by Hurricane Irma, not all together there.

 

It was a hard docking—we had wind, a dock too short, and failing light– in which Team Murphy experienced a lot of grinding of teeth, refraining from yelling, and counting to ten.  Afterwards, we both collapsed into sodden heaps.  In a herculean show of gentlemanly manners, Robert offered me the first shower.  After a shower, we agreed by mutual accord that we needed to get off the boat and get a good meal and a drink.  A really good meal and a really good drink.  Maybe then, we’d debrief.

 

And to finally celebrate our anniversary… which was the day before this adventure started.  Happy Anniversary Murphys.

 

OKEECHOBEE RESIDENT, HITCHING A RIDE.

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