Loop Leg #1A-3/19/13--3/23/13-Ft. Myers to Ft. Pierce

Ken and I headed out of Ft. Myers on Tuesday, March 19, 2013.  Since we don't know where our final boat home will be and we've been north to Sarasota, we will cross our wake and finish the "Loop" when we get back to Marina Jack's in Sarasota.  We will be heading East on the Caloosahatchee River to Lake Okeechobee then on the Okeechobee Waterway to Stuart, Florida. We plan to end this leg in St. Augustine, FL on March 31st.  Our new name is on the boat and dinghy and the canvas is now up on the back deck !!!

We did a bit of provisioning, had dinner with the Suess' at Firestones in Ft. Myers.  They had come down for few days of vacation at just the right time to come and see the new boat before we left.

After dinner, we got to bed early in hopes of a 7:30am start.  Oh well, like most boating things, there is no schedule.  The morning showed a large storm coming in from the West.  We hung around, said goodbye to some other boaters at Legacy, ate our last breakfast at Bennet's Cafe and waited to see what the weather would do.  After some discussion with other boaters, we went ahead and took off at 12:40pm.  Dennis and Joanne, from Miss Cameron, our Legacy Harbor boat neighbors, sent us off and took our all important "First Day on the Loop" picture.

  We traveled with Randy and Pat from Loon in the lead.  They are heading back home with this new boat to Atlantic Beach, NC.  Going along at 6 to 7 knots, we hit our very first-ever lock at the Franklin Lock.  The locks on the Okeechobee are said to have the nicest lock masters on the Loop and they didn't disappoint us with their helpfulness.

We pulled in to River Forest Marina at La Belle around 6:30pm.  We joined Randy and Pat for drinks and snacks before heading back to make dinner in the boat.  We left at daylight the next morning, hit Moorehaven Lock, took the Rim Route around the lake because of high winds and "Medium" chop.  We left Loon at Clewiston because our schedule was a little tighter than theirs and we wanted to make a little better time.  We ended up hitting something, the diver later suggested that it was probably a log, around the southeast side of the route.  We had some slight vibration so we slowed down for the rest of the day.  We went through the open Port Mayaco Lock and on to the St. Lucie Lock before hitting Sunset Bay Marina in Stuart, Florida.  For those non-boaters, there were also numerous bridges that needed to be hailed for opening.  All these things take time and we got to Stuart just in time for daylight to end -- 7:15pm.  Almost 12 hours on the water--we're sure that's the longest day traveling though not the longest distance traveled in a day.
Stuart is a nice visit.  We were able to get a diver to look at the underside of the boat and give us a better than expected report.  We can choose to limp along or make a change of plans to stop and have the props replaced or repaired.
We left Stuart on Friday around noon to go the 27 or so miles to Ft. Pierce City Marina.  A little rain and wind greeted us in Ft. Pierce just in time to dock.  Tomorrow is a big
Farmers Market Day in Ft. Pierce.
For those of you who wonder, this is how we work on the boat .....everyone thinks we just vacation......and we both think these trips include a lot of work.....

Cruise 4 - 2/23/13 -- 3/3/13

When we got back to the boat the new Seventh Sun III sign is on the stern but since the dinghy's bottom is what you see and they couldn't get the new name sign to stick to that, we still say "Pointless" to most.  We have been waiting on the new transmission to come in.  We thought that there might be issues with the transmission during sea trial but .....long story.  The work (transmission and fuel lines) was finished Friday night and we took off on Saturday morning.  Our plan was to get up to St. Petersburg/Tampa but we decided we didn't have the time to do that comfortably.  We stopped in Venice the first night at Crow's Nest, walked the 1.8 mile to dinner in town and took a little golf cart shuttle back. You can see our little Mainship with a big brother hovering on a very foggy morning in Venice.

Left there the next morning for Sarasota and Marina Jacks.  This is a great location....we listened to music at night and were able to walk to restaurants and Whole Foods !  We had visitors....Bryant, Hollenbachers and Shoups for lunch.  Don and Marilyn gave us a tour of their boat before taking back off to their condo a few miles down the ICW.








We visited St. Armand's one evening to walk and have dinner and visited the Ringling Museum the next day....the house, museums, grounds and the interesting history of the Ringlings makes this a must see.

The next morning we took off at 7:00am because we were going to try to get to Tween Waters early enough to enjoy....which we did.  Almost 60 miles is a long way in this boat.  We are learning that when averaging 8 mph travel takes a lot longer.  We decided it didn't matter how fast your boat can run, there are so many areas where you need to go slowly/little wake that 8mp is about what we are going to average.  Just another new idea to put into our brains.  The other is "channels".  That is what we do...watch for the channel markers, stay in the channel !  We never had to do that much in the NW waters.  Two new constants for us...stay in the correct channel and go slow all of the time.
Tween Waters is cute and laid-back with two restaurants, pool etc.  A mile walk for a late lunch and then back along the beach where the red tide has brought a lot of dead fish up on the beach along with a cough in my throat.  We took our new bikes for their inaugural ride and came back in one piece.  We took the dinghy to the Green Flash restaurant for dinner and back to Tween Waters for the crab races at 9:00.  We rode the bikes again up to the little town in Captiva for breakfast.
We went back to Ft. Myers and Legacy Harbor the next day to finish up any necessary chores.  We finally visited the Edison and Ford Winter Home Museum and later that night had dinner with Denise and Joanne, our next door neighbor boaters from Charleston.
When we come back in March we plan on provisioning and then hope to take off the next day.  We will be heading across the Okeechobee and end that leg at St. Augustine.
Oh, Ken was able to sand "Pointless" off of the bottom of the dinghy!!!