At long last, we are underway again! As you can see from the picture, spring has come and, for those of us on cruising boats, it is time to start heading north. Of course, we've been heading north since we left Key West, but today was the day when we turned our bow east and began what feels like the start of our homeward journey.

After a long business trip, we were reunited in Ft. Myers and after a day to get over the jet lag, we once again went through our departure routines and set off. Now those who are paying attention might have noticed that we were on the west coast of Florida and I said we had headed east, which might be a bad idea anyplace else. Here however, we have the Okeechobee Waterway that cuts across Florida from Fort Myers to Stuart. Although it presents its own navigational challenges, it is more than 200 miles shorter than going back around the way we came, avoids the super-urban Miami/Fort Lauderdale area, and lets us explore a part of Florida that is very different and which we've never seen.

Today we went through the first of several locks so we no longer have tides or salt water, but we do have alligators! As we were prepping our anchor this evening a 6-foot gator swam leisurely across our bow, maybe 30 feet off...I don't think we'll be doing any swimming here! Once the gator had gone, we proceeded to use our anchor in our first-ever med-moor on the LaBelle city docks. For those not familiar with the med-moor, it involves backing towards the dock, dropping the anchor a boat length or so from the dock, continuing to back towards the dock while paying out the anchor rode, and then stopping with the stern just about to touch the dock, tieing the stern lines to the dock and then pulling in the anchor rode so it pulls the boat against the stern lines and holds it in place. All went well and we docked without incident, thanks in part to a guy on the dock who caught our lines.

The city (town) of LaBelle provides these docks for free, including electric power, so we thanked them by going ashore and patronizing their supermarket and one of their restaurants. This seemed like a particularly good deal because, being inland, it was way too hot to cook on the boat!