We are anchored in Lake Worth ready for the crossing tomorrow. The float plan has been filed with Customs, we have the Bahamian customs papers filled out and ready, Maggie has had a potty and run on the beach at Peanut Island and I have a glass of wine at my side. I think we’re ready.
Ive said it before and it still holds so very true. Damn, it’s a small world. I mentioned last post that we were going to have a buddy boat. These are folks who posted on the AGLCA site about wanting someone to cross with. We responded but then had all the “issues” crop up. Well weather wasn’t in their favor so they didn’t cross. Now we’re ready and so are they. We met up today in Lake Worth. We put the dinghy in for the potty run to Peanut and stopped by their boat to introduce ourselves. I knew immediately that we had met somewhere, but couldn’t figure out where. As we walk around the island, Tim and I kept thinking back to where we could have met them. Key West- no, Sarasota- maybe, Fort Myers- no. We stopped back by after the run to chat some more. As soon as we did I knew- Carrabelle!!! We met them during our 2 week layover in Carrabelle. They were docked further down the marina from us and he, Long, has since grown a beard. They took their dinghy out for the Carrabelle Christmas boat parade and won 1st prize in their class. (They were the only boat in their class.). So, our new buddies are Long and Day on a Monk 36 from Massachusetts.
We finally left River Forest Saturday afternoon and continued our trip down the Okeechobee Water Way. Tim set a timer and checked the temperatures of the new shafts couplings every 30 min. We knew they would run a little hotter than normal until the packing was worn in. It seems that the work we had done has fixed our vibration, but Tim will continue to monitor it closely. Here’s another “small world” event. As we were cruising toward Clewiston, we were overtaken by a Grand Banks. As Tim and I looked closely we realized that we knew the boat. It was Inheritance Theif, a boat that had just been sold by our Seabrook Marina friend, Ray. Tim spent a couple weeks on Inheritance Theif helping Ray take it to Dog River, Mobile Bay. Ray had hoped to go to Cuba when we went last summer, but had crew issues and only made it to Bradenton. Anyway, as luck would have it, Inheritance Theif was also docking at Roland Martin Marina in Clewiston. We enjoyed meeting Tom, the new owner, and his crew- Keith, a fellow De Feverite (he has a Grand Alaskan) and Richard who were taking the boat to her new home in Miami.
Sunday we crossed the great Lake Okeechobee, 2nd largest fresh water lake in the 48 contiguous states. Lake Michigan is the largest and the other Great Lakes don’t count because they are partly in Canada. We were a little apprehensive about crossing Okeechobee because we had heard that it could get really rough if the winds kicked up. It’s very shallow, we saw depths from 7′ to 8″ in areas. If the wind is strong out of the north, there’s a long fetch to get it cranked up as the channel used for crossing is more southerly. If it weren’t for the alligators and the nasty water, we could have waterskied across. Speaking of gators- OMG there were some biggies out there.
It was a really interesting trip down the ICW from Stuart. As expected, there were some really beautiful, mega homes along sections of the trip. The amazing thing was sometimes right next to them would be older, small, cute cottages, holdouts from the past. Cruising along we also had a ring side seat to watch some of the mega yachts that had been in the Palm Beach Boat Show parading by. The show just ended Sunday and today many of them were being delivered back to their home ports.
