A Quick Dash Across Florida

Well, for a trawler moving at only 9-10 mph, the “quick dash” turns in to a 4-day trip!

While in Daytona Beach, we break bread & tell sea
stories with our Power Squadron friends
Don & Becky, who used to live in the New Orleans area.

We had to stay in Daytona Beach (yeah, I know, it’s a tough life) for 4 days longer than planned because of the tropical system that eventually became Hurricane Hermine.  The crazy thing came past Florida the first time just south of Miami, then stalled when it entered the Gulf, and finally turned back northeast to cross Florida again around Tallahassee.  Since we had no idea where this thing was headed (and the weather guessers didn’t know either), we had to “mark time” in a safe harbor in case our winds kicked up.

Finally on Saturday Sept 3, we planned our get-away.  The hurricane had cleared the area, but the weather pattern had settled into the typical Florida summer weather – 60% thunderstorms every afternoon.  Now, it’s bad enough being out on the water when the winds gust to 50 mph, but when those lightning bolts start lighting up the sky, you don’t really want to be the tallest thing in the area!  So even though the forecast called for 60% T-storms for the next 3 days, we rolled the dice & headed south. 

It was a 4-day trip for us from Daytona Beach to Ft Myers, and 3 of those days required us being under way for 9-10 hours, with one day getting under way from anchor before sunrise.  For 3 of those days, we somehow managed to stay just barely ahead of passing T-storms (sometimes by only 1-2 miles).  But on the 4^th day, our luck ran out, and we were in rain showers for the entire 7 hour trip.  (Hey Clint…we would have called you as we passed your old stompin’ grounds along the Caloosahatchee River, but it was raining so hard that we could barely see the next channel marker).  So we got a free boat wash that day – several times!

In addition to dodging the T-storms, we also had to co-ordinate our travel with the schedules of the 5 locks along the Okeechobee Waterway (OWW).  One in particular, had openings only 3 times each day, and you’d better not be late!  Most of the locks had a lift or drop of less than 10’, but on these locks, the water is let in or out via the lock doors, instead of like most USACE locks which have side underwater valves.  This method creates extreme turbulence inside the lock, which caused us to lose control 3 years ago when we first came through this way.  That day, our boat actually turned sideways in the lock due to the turbulence.

On a more pleasant note, one of the cool things about running south along the east coast in the Indian River was seeing all the dolphins.  Many times, there were dolphins playing in our wake alongside the boat, and at one time, Sue counted 6 dolphins all in our wake at once.  They were jumping sideways out of the water & landing with a loud smack, they were rolling around each other as they surfed our wake, and several times the young dolphin would be nudged by its parent as they all were swimming with us.  They entertained Sue for quite a while.

The other humorous item was the text we received from our sail boating friends Bill & Jeanie, who we traveled with 2 years ago in the Chesapeake Bay, and are still there.  Two years ago, we all had a hurricane pass the Chesapeake about 100 miles offshore.  It was Bill & Jeanie’s first experience with a hurricane (since they were originally from Chicago & Detroit & a bit nervous), but since Sue & I were from New Orleans, we brought the rum & showed them how a Hurricane Party works!  So last week, Hurricane Hermine leaves Florida & heads right up the Chesapeake at Bill & Jeanie, who texted us to say “I’ll bet if you guys were here, we’d be having another Hurricane Party!”

So now we’ve been in Ft Myers, one of our favorite cities, for the past 2 days, planning to depart tomorrow on a 3-day trip to St Petersburg Municipal Marina downtown.  This will be our 3^rd time to travel along this neck of the woods, so things are getting kinda commonplace.  We have our anchorages already picked out, with alternates if we get caught by T-storms again.  Once we get to St Pete, we’ll leave the boat to fly to Ohio for about a week.  When we return mid-September, we’ll make our final travel to our winter marina in Orange Beach AL.