Palm Coast to Huckins Yachts boatyard

The Marina at Hammock Beach was a great place to hold the 2014 Camano Rendezvous.  The weather turned out great and we met Camano owners from Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia. With the rendezvous in the rear view mirror, it was time to set sail for home....Jacksonville. The weather in late May has been in a pattern of strong afternoon thunderstorms, so we got a early start on Friday, May 30 and quickly got to St. Augustine, so we decided to make a run for Jacksonville Beach.  We watched the thunderstorms begin to form inland and just made it to Palm Cove Marina in Jacksonville Beach before the storms broke loose.  Next morning, sunny skies again as we made our way to the St. Johns River and headed west to Jacksonville.  We made it to Huckins around 11:30 just before the storms started again.  TIKA was pulled from the water on Monday and will be out for a few months as we have the bottom of the boat refinished.  We have the summer to dream about our next cruising adventure. This year was definitely a great experience.

 The 2014 Camano Rendezvous Attendees

 St. Augustine Municipal Marina and the Bridge of Lions

 Jacksonville's Landing is the our reference point for "we are home"

TIKA is a land yacht for awhile

Vero Beach, Titusville, Daytona and Palm Coast

After  leaving the St. Lucie Lock Marina, we made it up to Vero Beach in the early afternoon.  We decided to stay two nights and evaluate the weather before moving on.  In the mooring field, a few boats down from us was the Active Captain boat.   From their reports, they must have crossed the Okeechobee a few days before we did.  Our stay in Vero turned out to be short, and we took off for Titusville on our 2nd morning. 

  Acapella, Jeff Siegel's boat, the creator of Active Captain interactive website, in the Vero Mooring Field.

 We got in to Daytona Beach early enough to walk across the ICW bridge and walk the beach.  It was a beautiful day in the low 70;s

 Looking north in Daytona Beach at the Intracoastal Waterway.

 Our winter cruise came to an end at the Marina at Hammock Bay in Palm Coast.  TIKA will stay here for a couple months in advance of the May Camano Rendezvous at this beautiful facility.

A day at St. Lucie Lock

We stayed a day at St. Lucie Lock Campgrounds so we could have the Volvo Service company that rebuilt our Seawater pump on the way west, come back and fix a minor oil leak where the pump mounts to the engine block.  While we were at the lock, a barge which we had seen off and on during our journey eastward again caught up with us and passed through the lock.  The St. Lucie Lock was the only operating lock on the east side of Lake Okeechobee, so it was dropping the lake level to sea level.  In this case, about 14ft.

  Anger Management Up !

Anger Management Down !

Anger Management Gone !

On Wednesday, March 19th, we locked through acompanied by 4 manatee, dropped our 14 feet, leaving the St. Lucie Canal behind us for the 2 hour journey to the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, then 5 hours north from Stuart to the familiar and comfortable stop of Vero Beach.  We are now more than half way back from Ft. Myers Beach to Palm Coast, where we will leave TIKA in advance of the upcoming Camano Rendezvous.

Moore Haven, a very tough day across Lake Okeechobee and Stuart Lock.

After leaving Franklin Lock, we had a nice short cruise up to Moore Haven, which is right next to Lake Okeechobee.  The weather was breezy, but nice.  The forecast for the next few days was not going to be good, and we were debating whether to stay in Moore Haven, which is a very small town, or risk crossing the Lake.  The forecast for the next day was SSW winds at 25 to 30, but we talked to a couple who made the south rim route number 2 that day with 20 mile winds and the said the ride was fine.  We got up and took off at 7:30am and took the southern rim route.  Winds were high, but the bulk of the rim route is sheltered water, except the last 15 miles over open water.  Our first sign of trouble was getting past the Torry Island bridge on the south end of the lake.  We called the bridge tender, but got no response.   This is a manually operated swing bridge, so an operator actually walks to the middle of the bridge, inserts a large crank handle and manually cranks the bridge open.  After repeated calls on the radio, we finally got a response.  The bridge tender said they do not open the bridge with winds over 20 miles per hour.  I asked him when they would open the bridge and he replied that it would not be until the winds died down.  We were almost 20 miles into the 35 mile trip around the southern rim and did not want to turn back.  We hailed the bridge again and asked what we should do.  He responded that we could dock at the city docks and he would try calling his management to get an exception to opening the bridge.  The winds were well over 20 miles per hour, but we managed to get TIKA in a boat slip and we tied off,  Just as we had the boat tied, we got a call on the radio from the bridge tender indicating they would open the bridge for us.  I wondered whether we could get off the dock with the high winds, but the bow thruster had enough power and we backed out and headed for the bridge.  It was very interesting to see a man cranking a large bridge open by hand, but within about 10 minutes, the bridge was open enough for us to pass.  Just past the bridge, we turned north east and into open water.  Initially the waves were about 2-3 ft and on  our stern, but as we got further north the waves got about 4-5 ft and when be made our turn north for the last 5 miles to the lock to exit the lake, the waves were on our port stern at about 4-5 ft.  It was a challenge to keep on course, but we make the final leg, got through Port Mayaca lock on the east side of the lake and got into the sheltered waters of the St. Lucie Canal.  We  made Stuart Lock at the end of the canal at 5:30 pm, making it a 74 mile, 10 hour day.  Admiral Marlene and I were ready for a jumbo rum and coke.  The worst of the weather, one of those mid-western cold fronts was due to come through in the morning, so we planned on sitting the next day out at the dock.

Eastbound

It's mid March and our stay on Estero Island is at an end.  While we were on the west coast we took a few days and went north to Cayo Costa Island and Pelican Bay.  We spent a couple of days walking the beaches and nights stargazing.  We saw our first alligator swimming across Pelican Bay.  We also saw two other Camano Trawlers...We Are Blessed and Movin On.  We talked with Barney and Rachel from Movin On.  They were from Port Charlotte and plan on coming to the rendezvous in May in Palm Coast.

Pelican Bay

 

Nao Victoria, the replica of Magellan's only ship to survive of the original five he started with in his voyage around the world. The ship was in Fort Myers beach during March.

We headed back on March 15.  We made it from Ft. Myers Beach to Franklin Lock where we stayed at the Federal Campground and docks.  We went further east on March 16 stopping in Moorhaven at the City Dock.  The winds have been really high over the last few days so we may be waiting a day or so to cross Lake Okeechobee.
 

Goodbye Fort Myers Beach.   We had a great two months exploring!

 TIKA docked at the Franklin Lock Docks on our first night of travel back to the east coast

 The Caloosahatchee Canal from Ft. Myers to Lake Okeechobee is a wide deep man made canal connecting the east and west coast of Florida.

 A very large alligator sunning himself along the banks of the waterway.  Going west we didn't see any alligators, but we saw several in the water on the trip back east.  Two months warmer weather has brought them out.

Extended Stay

TIKA likes it so much on Estero Island, we decided to extend our stay through mid March.  We plan to make some short overnight trips but keep Fish Tale Marina as home base.

When cruising, the bottom of the dinghy identifies TIKA and our home port, since the dinghy covers the lettering on the stern.  While we were in port, I touched up the lettering on the bottom with a paint magic marker.  Looks great.  When cruising, courteous boaters wishing to pass you will call you on the radio and inform you which side they intend to pass.  If your name is clearly visible on the boat, it makes it easy for people to hail you.   By the way, there is another type of boater that doesn't care what your boat name is or informing you which direction they intend to pass.  They usually pass very close and slow down just enough to leave a huge wake with no time to turn into the waves.  As a result everything on shelves gets thrown everywhere as you roll violently with the waves.  There is a name for those type of boaters:........................(you can fill in the blank)

Every year we have a vessel safety check by the Coast Guard Auxiliary to insure we have all the necessary equipment on boat required by Federal and State Law.  Our boat neighbor at Fish Tale Marina is the Flotilla Officer responsible for conducting these examinations.  He was kind enough to do our safety check for 2014.  As a member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary, I can fly the Coast Guard Auxiliary Flag if my vessel has a current safety check.  The combination of the two should help inform local law enforcement that we are in compliance and help avoid being stopped or boarded underway.

Just horsing around in Ft. Myers Beach

The Budwiser Clydesdales visited Ft. Myers Beach today.   These are beautiful horses, but as I got close, I could hear the front two horses telling each other jokes about all the pale faced, while legged tourists from the north......how rude!!!! 

Marlene gazing out over Big Carlos Pass. This is the exit from Estero Bay to the Gulf.   We have navigated this twice for practice at near low tide.  Typical of Florida inlets, there are parts of the channel to the gulf that at low tide are around 3ft. This is actually the better of two alternatives to get to the gulf from our marina.  The other channel gets down to two feet depth at low tide.  Boating in Florida means being familiar with local knowledge and traveling at times that the tides are favorable to safe navigation.