MIDORI ADVENTURES

The weather is still stinky hot and humid, but the sky is clear this morning as we depart Stuart for the 38 mile trip to the Port Mayaca Lock which will be our entry point into Lake Okeechobee.

After departing the mooring field at Sunset Bay Marina, our journey takes us through the South Fork of the St. Lucie River. About three miles beyond the Palm City Bridge the river bears off the waterway to the east to the Route 76 Bridge. Then the waterway continues as the start of the St. Lucie Canal with the lock at Mile 15. This is the first of five locks that we will go through on the Lake Okeechobee Waterway over the next several days.

When we arrive at the lock, we contact the lock master on channel 13 for an opening. It will take a few minutes for him to clear the lock, but he instructs us to watch for the green light and to put our fenders out on the port side. When we enter the lock, an employee on the wall above, throws down a line for the bow which I grab and then another for the stern, which Brian grabs (having put the engines in neutral). We do not cleat the lines, but loop them around the cleats and use the cleats as leverage to move the line. When the gates open and water rushes in, there is a fair bit of turbulence, as we hold on to the lines and keep MIDORI close to the cement wall. When the gates open, we have been lifted fourteen feet!

The rest of the journey is fairly scenic. At mile 29 we pass by Indiantown Marina, where we could have overnighted, but we want to get an early start tomorrow morning and have decided to tie up to the "dolphins" near the Port Mayaca Lock - another 9 miles ahead.

We hold our breath as we pass under the Port Mayaca Railroad Lift Bridge which sets the controlling overhead clearance for all of the waterway with a 49 foot vertical clearance. Daily information is provided by the Corps of Engineers and today the height is 50.07 feet. Our mast is just under 48 feet. I watch as the antenna on top of the mast scrapes along the bottom of the bridge. We can hear it too! Just beyond the railroad bridge are the dolphins that mark the arrival area to the Port Mayaca Lock. We radio the lock master to let him know that we will not be coming through today and that we will be tying up to the dolphins. And this is where the fun (not) begins…….

A "dolphin" looks like a bunch of posts slanted in like a tepee and lashed together with strong steel cable and also have some big heavy duty cleats on them. But, they appear to be made for much bigger boats. MIDORI is 32 feet long and the dolphins are at least 50 feet apart. Although I manage to loop my bow line around a cleat on one of the dolphins, when the captain tries to back up to the other dolphin, the wind keeps pushing us away towards shore. We make several attempts to go forward, back up, loosen off, tighten up, etc. Finally, Brian sets the anchor and then lowers the dinghy and takes two lines tied together from the stern over to the dolphin and after several attempts, manages to loop the long line around the dolphin cleat and back to a cleat midship on MIDORI. There is a gentle breeze out of the southeast and things hold nicely through the late afternoon, suppertime, dusk and bedtime. When the wind shifts to the northwest sometime around 1:30 in the morning, we felt MIDORI go bump into the forward dolphin. The wind was pushing MIDORI back towards the stern dolphin, but the lines were very loose. So, we tightened the lines, watched the lightning storm in the eastern sky for awhile and planned what to do if the wind shifted again. We were lucky. The storm never reached us and the wind just died down…….didn't get much sleep though.

Stay tuned,

Co-Captain Lynn