We have started our Great Loop adventure. We left Port Tarpon Marina in Tarpon Springs, Florida at 7:30 a.m. Monday morning , April 14 with the sun shining over the top of the trees. The winds were light so we went straight out into the Gulf and it was fine. We anchored at Lido Key, in the Sarasota Inlet for the night. The big excitement: shortly before we stopped for the night, a sand shark swam by the boat.
I’m not sure which day the dolphins played in our bow wave, but they were certainly entertaining. They swam along, occasionally turning on their side as if to make sure I was watching and getting good pictures! They only stayed with us for a few minutes, but it was fun.
Our second day was very different from the first. The wind had shifted and was coming across the gulf making some waves with white caps. Still not the roughest leg of our journey so far. Anchorage at Punta Blanca Island off Charlotte Harbor, south of Punta Gorda.
It felt good to get into the river to start across the Okeechobee Waterway. Much calmer and quieter. We went upstream to the first lock and spent the night there. The next morning, we worked our behinds off getting the dinghy off the rear deck and onto the davits where it belongs. I’m not going to detail the trials and tribulations of that task, suffice it to say that we didn’t depart until after noon. We did get to run the dinghy around and test out our new electric motor. (We had decided that neither one of us wanted to have to pull start the outboard, and it was pretty heavy, too!) The new motor moved the dinghy along pretty smartly.
That afternoon, we arrived at the Ortona Lock at 4:33 p.m. After we hailed the lockmaster several times (and another boat tried twice), they came on the radio and informed us (very politely) that the lock’s hours were from 7 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. and they were officially closed…. We dropped anchor.
That left one lock to go through before crossing Lake Okeechobee: the Julian Keen, Jr. Lock. The passing went well and we went out into the lake. Lake Okeechobee is a pretty large lake. It is also a pretty shallow lake. Even staying in the channel, at times we only had 4.5’ reading on the depth finder. It was windy. It was rough. We had to hang on whenever we moved around the boat. Sometimes it felt like we were riding a bull at a rodeo! What a ride!
To be continued….
