Passage - La Belle City Dock, La Belle, FL to Roland Martin Marina, Clewiston, FL
9:59 AM Underway
5:22 PM Docked Face dock starboard side to
8.5 engine hours 38 miles

I hate locks. OK, we just haven’t transited enough of them, yet. But, I am not a fan of locks for sure. Today we negotiated two locks raising us up to the Okeechobee Lake - the 2nd largest freshwater lake in the US, only surpassed by Lake Michigan. So, those are the facts. The ugly truth was we had 15 - 20 knot winds on the nose all day long. Can’t get rough cause there isn’t enough of a fetch (open water) in any direction. It is like pulling a parachute. Don’t think I’m getting great fuel economy today.

Just before we get to pull into the Moore Haven Lock, there is a railroad bridge that comes down. Any cruiser can tell you they have never seen a railroad bridge down. Railroad bridges stay open until a train comes and then they close. So, yes, the once a year a train comes by and we don’t slip through before the bridge closes. The train takes forever to cross. And then nothing. The bridge doesn’t open. I hear the lock operator saying he is locking through in the westerly direction some boats. Only they aren’t going anywhere after they exit the lock because the train bridge is still closed. The train is long gone. What to do? Finally a truck drives up and tries to open the bridge. It makes a bad straining electrical sound and - NOTHING HAPPENS. They try again and NOTHING. I’m jockeying in position with the out rush of water from the lock. Finally - ever so slowly the railroad bridge begins to rotate. I yell over to the railroad guys that they need some new Ray-O-Vac batteries for the bridge. They laugh and after a few more jolts of electricity, the bridge has momentum working in its favor. I mean this thing is moving inches per minute. We finally squeeze through and Susan asks the guy how old is the bridge. He yells back 75 years old! It moved like it had never been updated in 75 years.

Now it’s our turn into the lock. Or is it a washing machine? I couldn’t believe my eyes after Liquid Therapy had entered the lock and got hold of the provided ropes. They filled the lock by opening the up water side slightly. It looked like a Harry Potter movie with the currents swirling around. I said to myself, “If I fall over I’ll never pop up.” Maybe it is a good idea to wear a life jacket in a lock. After the lock was filled, there was still some turbulence left. We let go of the bow line first, as the wind was going to help get the bow away from the lock wall. I went back to release the stern line. The bow had gotten much further out as I released the stern line and headed up to get the boat under control. The lock gods had their way with us and soon the boat went across sideways to the other side of the lock. The boat was not responding in a normal manner as we crashed into the other wall of the lock. We had all the fenders on the starboard side of the boat and none on the port side because the boat was riding with the starboard side against the wall of the lock. So, we slammed into the wall and only bruised the bright work in a few places. Our, seamanship was also bruised. I don’t get embarrassed over things any more. It’s just boating. But it was not our finest hour. HA. We joked with the lock master as we were leaving, and asked if he had seen much worse than our maneuver. He said “lots worse!”

The remainder of the trip was just beautiful along the rim of Lake Okeebhobee. We saw one alligator and lots of different birds- even a few bald eagles.
The railroad bridge and lock delayed our progress so much that we decided to pull into Clewiston to a marina. I really didn’t want to do that as it made us exit the Okeechobee through a lock. We put our life jackets on and this exit lock had very little change or wind issues and we had a good lock through.

Pretty exhausted, we ate alligator dinners at the marina restaurant. Kind of like lobster.
We fell asleep hard after getting back to the boat and attempting to watch a little TV.
Todays picture is Caloosahatchee River, Moore Haven Lock.