Okeechobee

What a pleasure to be on the Okeechobee Waterway. It's almost too easy. The canal is narrow, deep & calm. No more worrying about the wind & waves. No more slamming into rough water & rolling side to side for hours. We have several locks to go through, but that's no big deal. Plus it's all fresh water, so the boat isn't covered in salt anymore. We will go through 3 locks that bring us up about 13 ft. to the level of the lake. As we cruise the waterway we see horses, cows & baby pigs along the banks, alligators in the water & hundreds of mullet jumping clear out of the water. We even went through a lock with an alligator. At night hundreds of small bugs land on the boat, they're dead by morning, but leave bright blue stains all over the boat. Other boaters tell us the stains wear off eventually. There are lots of bugs at night, but strangely they don't bite.

We first stayed at the Labelle City Dock. It's a free dock with free water & electric. We had to do a stern-in Mediterranean mooring. We have the anchor out in the canal, the stern is tied to the dock & it looks like a jungle right next to us.

We next went to Clewiston & stayed at Roland & Maryann Martin's Marina. The lock at Clewiston was open because the water levels in the lake have been so high & we could go right through.

We then traveled across Lake Okeechobee & stayed at the campground just west of the St. Lucie lock. It's real nice with a park like setting & only $24 for the night with electric & water. We saw an alligator cruising in the water right behind the boat.

Next we'll go through the St. Lucie lock. That will bring us down 13 ft. to sea level & we'll be back in saltwater. We'll head east until we get to Stuart, then we'll start to head north & slowly head home. We want to make stops at all the places we missed on the way down.