Clewiston

11/20/14

It was warm & sunny for the first time in several days, so it was nice to be up on the flybridge again. It's still blowing a gale from the northeast making the temperature much lower than usual. We went through three locks, Ortona, More Haven & Clewiston. The only reason for going through the Clewiston Lock is to get to The Roland Martin Marina on the other side.

Along the waterway today we saw lot's of farms with horses & cows. There's also sugar cane fields. We saw an eagle dive to the water right in front of the boat and grab a big fish. It happened too quickly for me to get a good picture. When the doors of the Moore Haven lock opened there was a manatee right in front of the boat. It dove down, went under the boat and came up again right behind us. It then went into the lock. I guess it's traveling in search of warmer waters. It might be headed to the spring in Crystal River were the manatees gather because the water in the spring never goes below 72 degrees.

We spent the night at Roland Martin Marina and had dinner at the Tiki Bar. The food was good but the karaoke singing later that night was pretty bad. We had to shut the windows in the boat and turn on the air to drown out the terrible screeching that some people called singing.

Tomorrow we'll take the rim route around Lake Okeechobee. We haven't gone that way before. It's 10 miles longer than crossing the open lake, but will be much calmer and should be more scenic. Since the wind has been blowing so hard for days now the waves on Lake Okeechobee are in the 5-6 ft. range and are expected to be 7-8 ft. tomorrow. We don't need to deal with that!

Ortona Lock

Water spills in from the front to raise us up to lake level.

Moore Haven Lock

Airboat on the waterway. Probably going into the swamp to hunt alligators

Construction on the waterway. It doesn't look like they made any progress since the last time we came through.

Clewiston Lock