May & Bill's "Across the State" boat trip
Thursday, 18 - Sunday, 21 July 2002
We had wanted to go 'across the state' - through Lake
Okeechobee (the second largest
inland lake in the continental USA), for quite some time.
The key element to do this - at this time - was - we went bicycling there
a couple of weeks ago, and found one of the 5 locks was already open - full
time - the lock called "Port Mayaca" - on the southeast corner of the Lake.
Knowing that - and that May had come back from China and I didn't have any
'commitments' - we took-off on the morning of Thursday 18th, and, after
11 1/2 hours - ended up at the "Matanzasas Inn" in Ft. Myers Beach.
Five locks, 160 miles, 11 1/2 hours in a 14 foot boat is a LOT.
BUT there's a LOT to see, experience, view, and wonder-over in the interim
between Florida's Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
We arrived in Ft. Myers Beach at 7:30 pm on Thursday, - had dinner and a
well-deserved sleep. Then on Friday morning - we took off to explore
points south, spent most of the morning doing that - then back to the Ft.
Myers Beach area about lunchtime. Then went north - slightly and motored
around the causeway islands to the Captiva / Sanibel resort areas, prayed
a lot for enough wind to fly our trainer-kite or even better real kites -
but to no avail - the wind gods were not listening to our prayers.
Later we came back towards Ft. Myers Beach and had a length napping session
while anchored off a nearby beach.
Dinner on the 'boardwalk' near the beach was moderately good - then crashed-out
again.
Saturday morning we went north - outside in the ocean - up the western-coasts
of Sanibel and Captiva and came back in Redfish Pass. We encountered MANY
dolphins and some rays along the way. We tried, repeatedly to
take some digital video of the dolphins - but alas Mr. Bill's videoing skills
are not what they should be so those are deciding boring cuts and will not
be published to the public masses.
Along the way - throughout of four-day-episode, Ms. May took a number of
digital pictures, and we'll share them with you here.
this is a video-clip of the locking-process in Port St. Lucie Lock - very
near our home, - (about 1 hours away).
Picture-Directory is 'here
', give us another couple of days and we'll properly bring everything into
the 'main-page' here - with more annotation....
and - here's a 'rough' geographical outline of the distances & the statistics
involved:
Ft. Myers Ft. Myers
Franklin Ortona Moore Haven
Lake Okeechobee
Beach downtown
Lock Lock
Lock
25 miles
14 miles 25 miles 25 miles
6 miles
Lake Okeechobee Port Mayaca Port St. Lucie
Stuart
Lock Lock
home
25 miles on-shore
25 miles 15 miles
last updated: 25July02