Stuart and the end of the world as we know it.

     On March 12 a group of 4 cruising boats left Old Bridge Village in North Fort Myers headed for Stuart. Our first stop on our leisurely cruise is the WP Franklin Locks and Campground, a very nice peaceful spot with 8 slips with electricity and water about 12 miles upstream from our village. The next day Donald Trump declares Covid 19 a National emergency and quickly life started changing.  

    After spending a relaxing evening at the Campground, we headed east for our next stop Moore Haven. On the way we passed through Labelle which has free city docks and on through Ortona Locks.  My bow got out from the wall a bit in the lock, I had to hang on with all my might to keep it from swinging around.

    To use the city docks at Moore Haven you just tie up and walk across the street to City Hall and pay $1.00 a foot. There is a park along the docks and a building with restrooms and showers across the street. The docks are old and very high. It was a bit of a challenge to get out of Cloud Nine and up onto the dock. The following morning we went through Moore Haven Locks and on to Clewiston and then across Lake Okeechobee to Port Mayaca. We had a wonderful crossing.

 

    We spent that night at Port Mayaca with the smaller boats rafted to the Camanos and the     Camanos tied off on the dolphins. The next day we headed on to St.Lucie Locks and enjoyed an uneventful passage. Before long we were looking for available mooring balls at Sunset Bay Marina.It would end up being home for a bit longer than expected.

    By the time we got here I was having battery problems. My friend in the Rinker was having issues with one of his engines. We got an uber into town and had the driver take us to several places and wait on us. He was great and got a good tip.

I purchased 3 new lead acid batteries. It was a lot of fun hauling them back to the boat on the dinghy. After much troubleshooting, I determined that my problem was actually my charger. One of my cruising buddies had a portable charger that I used to try to top the batteries off one by one.

This was a constant struggle the entire time we stayed there.

We would dinghy to the Marina every evening for happy hour with our friends. One evening we got incredibly lucky and the Marina was having an end of season dinner, it was a wonderful buffet. The next day as Wendy was stepping out of the dinghy, there was a see-saw effect and the front of the dinghy launched her flat onto the concrete dock.

    The fall had apparently cracked a couple of Wendy's Ribs. Needless to say she was ready to go home and almost called her brother to pick her up and drive her home.  We had a few days of less than desirable crossing windows for heading back, so we waited. We would take the Marina bicycles to Publics a mile or two up the road to buy supplies. That was a surreal experience, people were wiping down all the carts, the shelves were sparsely stocked and some people were wearing masks. We tried to social distance with all except our little group.  Fellow Rossi owner Bill Webster and his wife Molly were going meet us in Stuart after coming back from the Bahamas, but their next marina had stopped  allowing any boats that were not all ready in the marina to come in for anything but fuel. They went on to work their way up the coast. 

  10 days after we had started our trip, the wind was again perfect for a crossing.  On the 23rd we headed back to Port Mayaca.

Tied up again to the dolphins. This time we had an Alligator circling the boats. We also got to watch a couple of  sailboats heeling to get under a railroad bridge. That was quite entertaining, I am happy that I don't have to deal with that 

The next day we passed through the open lock and crossed Lake Okeechobee and on to Moore Haven for another night at the city docks. This time we had to call City Hall and give them a credit card. Between the 

lake and Moore Haven we met another cruising couple who were working their way back to Ft.Myers from the Keys. They had been booted from their marina in the Keys and were heading home. Luckily we all had fueled up in Stuart or Clewiston and didn't have to worry about stopping at any Marinas on our way home.

Lake O was smooth as glass for our crossing back and worth the wait, as it can get pretty ugly pretty quick. After another night in Moore Haven, we continued the rest of the way home to Old Bridge Village. When we got there, the clubhouse and pools were closed and signs were posted everywhere about social distancing. Hopefully this pandemic doesn't last very long 😞 Amazing how much can change in such a short time.