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This
is a trip that almost everyone who lives in Southwest Florida only
dreams about. Boaters wishing to buy property in Cape Coral often ask Barry
if he has cruised across the Okeechobee Waterway to the “other
side”. Now we can say:
“yes! we’ve done
that”. The window of
opportunity finally came to us during the summer of 2002 and we
decided we needed to take it before it never happened again.
We will also be taking “Salty” (of course) our Soft Coated
Wheaten Terrier – as “the crew” on his first big boat trip.
Barry has been called a “Salty Old Dog” on many occasions
and so “The Adventures of a Salty Old Dog” seems an appropriate
name to be calling our cruises, but then, some would argue that it is
the dog our Adventures are named after.
We will be taking our time going to many different places and
marinas from Cape Coral, through the Okeechobee Waterway, down around
to the Florida Keys and then back up again through the Florida Bay on
the Gulf of Mexico to Cape Coral. So, pray for good weather and welcome to “The Adventures of
a Salty Old Dog”…..
It’s
been a week-long process of getting the Sea Ray ready for our first big
cruise. Most important was to have all electronics, engines,
generator and navigational equipment checked and double-checked to
ensure top performance. Brad,
of Brad’s Marine Services made sure that all was in good running
order and we were good to go. The
boat is now packed up, all systems checked, fully fueled - and we are
off! We will continue to give daily updates on our progress,
points of interest and hopefully not too many glitches.
Stay tuned to “The Adventures of a Salty Old Dog”
with the Captain (Barry), Firstmate (Barbi) and Crew (Salty Dog)……
CRUISE Day
1 - Friday, July 19, 2002
We left our dock in Cape Coral at 1:30 pm – the first day was exciting – to finally be on the trip we have talked about so many times. We saw many interesting things along the shores as we passed Fort Myers, Alva, Labelle and
Moore Haven. The first lock into the Okeechobee Waterway is W.P. Franklin Lock & Dam. Lockmasters are on Channel 13 and Bridges are on Channel 9 throughout the trip. The Alva Bridge height is 22’ – 23’ clearance. The next lock is Okona Lock and the water inside the lock lowers and raises quite a bit more than the W.P. Franklin Lock. Past the Okona Lock the water way drops by 6’ – 8’ feet to a depth of approximately 16’ – 17’. It is a quiet, tropical cruise so far. We docked for the night just before the
Moore Haven Bridge, as there is no docking of any kind at any of the Locks along the way. Salty was excellent all day and learned quickly to get out of the way when we were in the locks! We approached the
Moore Haven dock facility at 5:00 pm – it said there were shower facilities but there was none in sight…. In fact,
Moore Haven almost resembles a Ghost Town with nothing in sight. It started to rain just as we got docked. There was an alligator watching us just off the stern so we had to be very careful with Salty! There was no dock master or anyone else for that matter to be seen. We walked quite a long way just to get something to eat… well sort of, we ordered a “Beast” pizza and it was exactly that – beastly!
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