Spring 2013

Welcome back! Yep, it's Spring and that means it's time for Lady Chateau to start the journey back to Minnesota. The weather's been good here, but Minnesota still has ice and snow and a frozen St Croix River. We have a few things to take care of before departure, but the upcoming journey finds me excited to get underway.

Sunday, 4/7/13, 8:20AM; Lady Chateau is off the dock ... yahoo! We're underway for the journey to Minnesota. It's kind of windy offshore, so we're riding on the inside up to Stuart. I left Pier 66 on my own, but picked up Admiral Dick S. at Houston's in Pompano. It was a late night for me last night. The flybridge curtain replacement project took longer than hoped, but was finished at 9:45PM. Then it was off to Publix to get enough beer and potato chips to feed us for a few days. Everything seems to be running fine (except the I Tunes ... $#@^), so ... here we go!

Here's a last look at Pier 66 as we put it in our rear view mirror.

Going past Bahia Mar ...

Nice, old motor sailor ...

In West Palm Beach, there is a boat yard that caters to mega yachts. They hardly have room for new business and it's jammed full. Here's a peek at that, along with Venus, Steve Job's new yacht ...

It doesn't look very big, but it's 256 feet and reportedly, $138 million. That's a couple I Phones ...

How about that dreamed of "house on the water"?

Going past the Jupiter Lighthouse ...

The very competent, highly qualified Crew ...

Heading out of Port Mayaca Lock, in to Lake Okeechobee ...

Out in the Lake, there's nothing to see or hit (almost) but it still requires some very serious driving!

Well, not really ...

We made it to the St Lucie Lock on the first night. That gave us an easy run the next day to Moore Haven.

Pics around the Lock ...

That's where we stopped in to the local pub and met Gary, the new owner. $1.00 Happy Hour drafts are pretty affordable, yes?

At the Moore Have dock ...

The lockage system on the Okeechobee Waterway is a little different from that on the Western Rivers. The water level is regulated by opening and closing gates. Here, the chamber is getting filled ...

Dick ...

Wednesday, 4/10 had us getting off the dock at 5:30 AM for the run to Sarasota.

We leave the Intracoastal Waterway at Boca Grande Pass. The ship channel runs to the southwest, but we can save a little time on a shortcut next to the beach. It's very, very shallow outside the alleged channel, so it sure keeps our attention as we're heading for deeper water ...

And out into a beautiful Gulf of Mexico ...

Keeping busy and lookin' good ...

4/15

Well, we've made it to Clearwater! Dick is off and flew back to Ft Lauderdale and Curley and Katie flew in and are onboard. We arrived on Saturday and were hoping to leave on Sunday, but the ole Mother Nature/wind thing took over. So, it's now Monday night and we're looking to get out at 4:00AM... weather holding. Here's a shot of the Sunshine Causeway by Tampa ...

Some of the competition ...

Curley and Katie on the aft deck in 88 degrees ...

At the dock in Clearwater Municipal Marina ...

4/16 ... The weather looked good, so we decided to make the run to Apalachiacola in the morning. We were up at 4:00AM and shortly thereafter off the dock. Man, it was such a nice morning and certainly a pleasure to be boating in Florida. Here we are at sunrise ...

The morning was really very nice, but then the wind switched and picked up and was just off our beam. It wasn't too bad, but a little rolly, polly, which led to putting down lamps and candles and all that stuff. You boaters know what I mean, yes? About four or five hours of that and then the wind dropped and gave us a great ride the rest of the way to Apalachiacola. It was about 170 statute miles and 15 hours from coast to coast, so all and all, not a bad day. The last part had us watching dolphins ...

And spending a little time on the bow ...

The sun was just going down as we approached Government Cut at St George Island ...

A couple glasses of wine and we were right to bed! Wednesday morning had us getting some fuel, a little engine maintenance, and then on our way. Apalachiacola is still a fishing town. There's many shrimpers that go in and out and the fresh seafood is fantastic. It's quite an old town with much character and charm. I love staying a few nights to take it all in.

Here's a couple locals ...

And the last boat I drove ...

4/17 ... Panama City Marina is such a charming place. Great docks, excellent electric, and very friendly staff. We sure love staying... but, Mobile is calling and we need to be there in a couple days, so it's off again in the morning!

Off for a run in town while Curley and Katie walked in for breakfast. I might have sweated more, but we all had a great morning. Then, we slipped the lines and headed out for Ft Walton.

Panama City Marina ...

Our plan was to tie to the courtesy City Docks at Ft Walton, but when we arrived, we saw that they're under repair. We thought spending the night at anchor would be just delightful, so we kept on. I chose a spot that looked pretty nice with good holding and wind protection. As we got closer, the weather people claim a storm is going to come through. It's the same line of weather that the whole Midwest is seeing. Rain, snow, wind ... general gunk. One weather guy predicted strong winds and I'm not a very good sleeper at anchor in that, so we elected to push to Pensacola and a Marina that's much more secure.

Curley, showing off his line handling ...

The beautiful sugar sand beaches of Ft Walton ...

Out into Santa Rosa Sound ...

An Osprey doing work at the local air base ...