Today at 4:30am we awoke to a heavy duty thunderstorm. It sounded as if we were inside a car going
through a car wash. The storm lasted over an hour.
We left the Roland Martin Marina in Clewiston at 7:45am.
As we went out the canal we were surrounded by dragonflies. We finally
entered the lake.
Quick Lake facts: Okeechobee means “big water”. It’s the
7th largest freshwater lake in the U.S. It’s extremely shallow. The
lake’s depth averages 10ft and that’s considered normal. The past couple of
years it has hit record lows. In 2008 when portions of the lake bed where
exposed above the water line, the bed dried out and caught fire. Seriously, the lake was on fire.
At the 2 mile marker, there was a large concrete tank(?)
of some kind. I don’t know what it is but the pelicans got use out of it.
It
was relatively calm when we set out. It was around 9am when the waves kicked up considerably to a
moderate chop of 3-5 ft swells with white caps. At that time we were around the
halfway point of the lake crossing. We
were rocking quite a bit, and at 7 1/2 knots (8mph) we weren’t exactly slicing
through them. All I could think of was a limerick which I
re-did:
There
was a retired couple on a ship
Who
counted each pitch and each dip
Each
roll and each yaw,
Each
sea and each saw
On
their Lake Okeechobee crossing trip.
We
were happy to reach the Port Mayaca lock and enter the calm water of the St. Lucie canal at 11:00.
We took the canal to the Indiantown marina arriving around 12:20 and were
warmly welcomed by some lovebugs at the fueling dock. We traveled 34 miles today; tomorrow it’s on
to Fort Pierce.
