Spring 2018 Ft Lauderdale to Stillwater, MN

4/20/18 Today is a trip to Miami for the last ride of the season. It certainly was a beautiful day, but we won't miss all the bridges and no wake zones after we leave!

South, towards Rickenbacker Causeway ...

4/23 We've got a long day ahead of us to get to the St Lucie Lock at Stuart, so we were through the first bridge at 4:00AM. No worries, though, it's a great day. We'll that is until we reached the first bridge in West Palm Beach. It's under construction for replacement, and it's 4 hours between lifts...@#$%. So we waited ...

North of West Palm is a HUGE boatyard. They service yachts to over 300 feet, and there's a bunch of them ...

This threw off our plans, resulting in us being unable to get through the first lock before 5:00, so we tied up below the lock and awoke to a little fog ...

4/24 The locks open at 7:00, but we couldn't get the first lift and we made it through at 8:00, and on to a beautiful day.

There's a rail bridge just before the Lake ...

And then, out through the lock into the Lake ...

It was a great day to cross the 25 miles of Lake Okeechobee. Very little wind, and no waves. Plus, we've got Curley watching over us!

We make our way to the canal that runs parallel to the shoreline, and over to the Moore Haven Lock ...

Curley, working hard through the lock ...

Franklin Lock is the last one as we travel west through the Okeechobee Waterway. It's a few miles east of Ft Myers ...

We metered about four more hours to Cabbage Key and through out an anchor. The speculation is that Jimmy Buffet wrote "Cheeseburger in Paradise" at the resort bar. The sunset surely was paradise for us!

4/26 We're up early, taking in the anchor. There's an outlet to the Gulf just a few miles away, so we decided to go offshore as we go to Clearwater. Travel on the ICW is pretty slow, and it's much easier to be offshore, so we poke our nose out to see what it's like. Well, it didn't take too long to decide toter around and go back in. It wasn't really rough, just uncomfortable. So, ICW, here we come. There's more to see, like the interesting bridges ...

Here, we're going by Anna Maria, looking towards the Sunshine Causeway Bridge ...

We made it to Clearwater kind of late, but it's nice to be there. The weather forecast is a little rough for the next couple days, so we'll stay here and tackle a couple projects, get in a run, and get some rest. Our buddy Howard rode his motorcycle over from St Augustine to have dinner with us ...

4/29 The weather forecast looks pretty good for today, with a little bit of sea conditions for the first couple hours. Well, they were right! Whew, we took some bouncing. We were stuffing the bow into the waves and there's spray going all over and we're hangin' on to our chairs. I considered doing an about-face, but Curley talked me out of it (thanks, Curley). I'm glad that he did because it turned into a pretty nice ride ...

We looked for the green flash, but missed it again ...

There was a big ole moon, helping us across. We could almost read by the light!

It was a little late, but we made it into Apalachicola. We had a beautiful morning to take on some fuel. The town was once a cotton town, and it evolved into a seafood town. Now, it still has the seafood part, but it's gotten kind of touristy. That's okay, anti stall has the rural part to it ...

4/30 Off to Panama City. It'll be a fairly easy day for us. We'll catch up on some maintenance and have a little walk around (nice to get off the boat) ...

We have a little time to assess the mess we took during the crossing. The fridge flew open, we lost prime in one of the ship's water pumps, and we nearly had a DISASTER down below!! Two shelves broke in the liquor cabinet (oh, my), but fortunately, no casualties. We had to do some repair, though ...

5/1  We're on our way to Ft Walton. This is the town with very, very nice beaches. Here's some dunes that are next to the ICW ...

There's some very accommodating City docks that are in a great spot for us. The police patrol the area, too, so it's pretty secure ...

We had a great evening, but it's up early to make it to Mobile ...

The inlet at Pensacola has a lot of current, and it will shoal in the worst places. Here's a dredge, clearing the way ...

We'll make our way down the ICW and into Mobile Bay.

The edges of the Bay are pretty shallow, and a 45 foot deep ship channel has been dredged down the center for commercial traffic. Watch out!

5/3  We arrived early enough to get hauled to do the prop shaft work. They were just splashing a shrimp boat as we came in ...

Way back in January, we took a big tarp around our propeller and shaft. It was pretty bad, but we got it to come of and kept on for the season. Now that we're out, we see that there's still some of it left on the prop ...

The object of the haul out is to remove the old propeller shaft and replace it with the new one that we had onboard. This requires some disassembling and reassembling of parts on the inside of the boat. Here's the completed job ...

We hauled to at 4:00 on Thursday, and by 9:00Am the next morning, we're finished! Yahoo, Curley! Back in, we go ...

5/4 It's Crew-change day, and Howard arrives ...

He rode his motorcycle from Jacksonville to Mobile to help (thank you!). Now we lift it up to the bridge and secure it for travel ...

5/5 Off early, headed for Coffeeville, AL. First, it's through Mobile and the ship traffic ...

This part of the waterway can be very narrow and winding. There's a few towboats, but we need to know where there are as we approach each other. Here's one pushed up on the bank, doing a little work (we think?) ...

We arrived at the Coffeeville Lock in daylight, giving us enough time to have a relaxing dinner and a good nights' sleep. Unfortunately, the lock operator had a different opinion about vessel priority and and who may go first, so we waited ... and waited ... and waited for 2 hours. It was pretty discouraging.

5/6  It's a great morning, and it should be an easy 100 mile day. We made it to the Demopolis Lock and got right in ...

We tied up, and went out for a great Mexican dinner ...

5/7 It's another great, early morning, past the white cliffs of Epes ...

Another day without lock hold-ups and we're into Columbus Marina for a sunset ...

5/8 There's 7 locks for us, today, and 120 miles. It has the possibility to be a very, very long day if we have to wait, but we've got a beautiful morning!

A little scenery along the way ...

Having to go through 7 locks on this section gives us the chance to wait for towboats going through. Well, we did pretty good at the start, but there was waiting for the last 3 locks of the day. Here's the last lock for the day and of the Tombigbee section. It's the Whitten Lock, and the rise is 84 feet. That in itself takes a lot of time to drain and fill. The website reads 20 million gallons ... whew!

We made it through, and about 4 hours later we found a spot to roost for the evening. It's nice to have a spot close to the lock. This way, we'll know what's going on in the morning.

5/9 We've off like a bandit! Although our eventual destination is north, and this stretch of the Tennessee River we are headed south. We have 190 miles of easy, wide beautiful scenery and easy boating. We can pull back the throttles and save a little fake, too. Here in the South there's much history. Architecture and battlefield are all around. It's not much of a photo, but here's the look at the Shilo area, at Pittsburg Landing. This is a spot of brutal battles and many, many casualties ...

More scenery ...

5:00PM finds us tied to a barge fleeting area. We're nice and secure, and I get to listen to the trains, too ...

5/10 Today, it's an easy, 75 mile day to Kentucky Dam Marina. First, we'll need to take a drink of diesel fuel at Paris Landing ...

5/11 Very sad ... Howard needs to get off to return to his life in Jacksonville. Good for him, too bad for us ...

The view of the docks ...

The next few days finds me by myself. I get to run, and fix a couple things, and relax. But, the calvary is in on Sunday ... Yahoo!

5/14 The last lock on the Tennessee River is the Kentucky Lock. They're building a an additional chamber next to the old one, and there's a lot of construction. We called the lock and after a four hour construction delay, we snuck right in ...

Okay, I post this boat a lot, but this is the boat that ran into a bridge on the TN River a few years ago. It broke a span and shut down the highway for quite a while ...

We'll go past the Paducah City front, and then down to our dock ...

Today was an easy ride to Paducah. It's a little too far to get to Cape Girardeau from the marina in one day, so we'll stop at the new Paducah City Docks. They're very nice, and they have electricity. This is good, because it's over 90 degrees, and we'd like to have a cool night with the air conditioners running.