And the Ghost of Osceola Cried
Okeechobee Waterway
Part 3: Port Macaya to Fort Myers
We were up at dawn as usual, excited to see Lake Okeechobee at long last. But first we had another lock to pass through. With the binoculars, I could see a square of blue ahead. The lock was open because the lake level was down. There was no need to lift further. We were almost in Lake Okeechobee. I did a little happy dance on the deck. The weather was crystal clear and the lake was ahead. A light breeze wafted up behind us. We could sail across the lake. A narrow channel led out to the deeper water.
Once past the last marker, we raised our big green sail and cut the motor. The silence was a huge relief.
Eric was excited to put out a fishing line. He said he’d always wanted to fish in Florida and was thrilled to be able to obtain a fishing license online for just fifty bucks. I refrained from pointing out how much fish we could buy (all cleaned and prepped) for fifty dollars. He had a line over the side in no time. Our sailboat, Pelican, breezed along at a stately two knots. We could walk faster, but we wanted to enjoy the lake. There was no need to rush across. It was only thirteen feet at the deepest so if it got dark or we got tired, we could throw the anchor down anywhere.
Port Macaya receded behind us and the peace of sailing enveloped us. The sun sparkled on the water. It looked blue reflecting the sky, but if you looked down it was a sort of evil-looking green. It was so choked with algae you couldn’t see down six inches. We’d heard about the pollution, but somehow it was hard to accept. The lake was so big, so wild and there was no one here. A couple of power boats zoomed by, but that was it.
Something caught my eye ahead, something shiny on the water. With binoculars, I could see it was mylar balloons. It made me both sad and mad to see them. Plastic is such a great evil in this world, especially in the water because sea animals mistake it for food and eat it. Some of them die. We fished them out of the water and I deflated them and tied them in knots before shoving them into the trash.
It was just one more insult to the once-beautiful lake. Eric took in his fishing line. We wouldn’t eat any fish out of this lake. It was too awful. Instead we focused on sailing and had a nice sail across.
We anchored near the entrance to the canal on the other side and spent a very quiet night just hanging out in Lake Okeechobee. There were no other boats there. This natural treasure was so deeply spoiled, no one even came out to enjoy it. It just made us sad. In my head ran the lyrics of the song Seminole Wind, the line about hearing the ghost of Osceola cry. I felt like crying myself.
Next morning, we were up before dawn, sailing towards the canal at the town of Clewiston. It was another beautiful clear day and an easy wind was blowing us along. At the edge of the channel out of the lake were a series of small islands called “spoils” where mud dredged out of channel was dumped. Some were just sand, almost awash. Some had waving grasses with bright white herons standing out among the green and blue. It was very pretty.
At the end of the channel, we expected a lock at Clewiston, so Eric started the motor for better maneuvering. She started right up but a few minutes later, she coughed and choked to a stop. Oh shit. Eric scampered about, got her going again, went online to try to troubleshoot the problem and left me to the helm. It was fine, really, better than fine. It was a perfectly gorgeous day, sixty-five degrees (in January, mind you) full sun and a nice wind carrying us along. We left the lake and sailed quietly along up the very narrow channel.
A couple of fishermen roared past, but otherwise it was peaceful and lovely. On the left bank was the steep dike and to the right, a solid barrier island (spoil), which protected us from any waves off the lake. It was dream conditions. The helm required almost no effort, so I peered through my binoculars looking for alligators. An odd dust-colored clump in a bush turned out to be a two-foot iguana. In one long stretch I saw a green heron (one of my favorite birds) about every twenty feet. In the next stretch it was egrets, then great blue herons. The sun was warm, the breeze cool.
Eric came on deck and was standing looking at the right bank when a six-foot alligator snapped at a heron. Eric shrieked like a girl, the heron squawked frantically and the alligator thrashed in irritation. Up until that moment, the alligator had been invisible. It was thrilling and a little terrifying. After he caught his breath, Eric said he thought he could nurse the motor along through the lock, but that we should make an unplanned stop at a small town called Moore Haven to make the repairs. By this time, a lock was no big deal and the motor was fine. It was an intermittent fuel supply problem, so he kept her going by pumping extra fuel in her. He had an idea how to fix it once we were at the dock in Moore Haven.
After we tied up at the town dock, two men started running noisy leaf blowers on the street. Eric was really irritated by the racket as he struggled to remove the cover on the outboard. It was very hot and sweat rolled off his nose. The outboard, as the name suggests, is outside the boat, hanging over the water. The cover has six screws you have to remove and try not to drop in the water. Tricky business. As I handed him tools and collected the screws for safekeeping, I noticed a food truck pull over next to the dock. Then another one came. Huh, I thought. I wonder if there’s a wedding or something going on.
When I went in to pay for our dock space ($33/night, free hot showers!) I asked the lady what was going on and she told me it was a monthly town event and we just happened to be there on the right night. In addition to the food trucks, she said there would be live music. At dusk, the music started and it was outstanding, much better than the band we heard at the farmer’s market in Stuart, a much larger and wealthier town. They played for hours, just rockin’ every tune.
We ate off a food truck and the fried plantains were delicious. Half the town turned out along with a bunch of folks from neighboring towns. It was a really good party. A few couples were cutting a rug in front of the bandstand.
Feeling grateful, I went up to some folks at a picnic table and inquired if they were from the town. I wanted to thank them for this amazing “welcome” we received. The town councilman responsible for this event happened to be at that table and he was thrilled to hear we were enjoying it. He was a young go-getter and said he’d had to fight the other (older) councilmen to agree to it. The band played on. We loved it.
We almost stayed two nights because we liked it so much, but the following afternoon the wind kicked up and we thought we could sail some more. The wind didn’t last long, but it gave us a chance to test the motor after Eric’s repair and she did great. We’d planned to stop in another little town called La Belle because it had a grocery store in biking distance from the free (!) town dock.
As we approached the town, the wind was blowing hard, right in our teeth. We hovered near the town dock, but it looked tricky to get into and the finger piers were obviously made for much smaller boats. With the wind blowing so hard, we were hesitant about getting in there. There was another free dock a little way off, so we motored over there to take a look. It was parallel to the canal and would be easier to get into, but we would have to tie sideways to two of the finger piers because they were again, so short.
As we hovered in the canal assessing the situation, two men walked down to the dock from the picnic shelter where a small crowd was gathered. They waved at us and offered to help us into the dock. It was nice of them to offer, but you never know what sort of experience people have and sometimes this can cause real problems. I waved and thanked them for the offer. Then one of them hollered across the water, “We have lots of leftover fried chicken!”
That was all I needed to hear. I grabbed the tiller and steered for the dock. It was really an easy upwind landing, but Eric was nervous about my driving, so he took the helm. I lassoed a piling and zip-a-dee-do-dah we were tied up and headed up the hill for fried chicken. Turned out it was a paddling group and their meeting was done so the food was all packed away. We had taken too long getting tied up.
We stood there awkwardly with our empty bowls and tried to make conversation.
“Do you all paddle around here?” I asked. They said they did.
“Aren’t you afraid of alligators?” I asked.
They laughed and said, “Aw, they don’t bother you.”
“Man, I’m scared to death of them,” I said, much to their amusement.
One of the ladies must have noticed our empty bowls and kindly asked if we were hungry. It was lunch-thirty and boy were we ever hungry. Out came the fried chicken, homemade and delicious, and then another lady dug out a pan full of the most amazing fruit salad. This is something we just don’t have on the boat. Too much trouble to make and too hard to keep cold. I was practically drooling. There were mandarin oranges and strawberries, blueberries and raspberries all on a bed of fresh spinach. There were mysterious orange cubes that I thought were cantaloupe, but turned out to be cheddar. It was the best fruit salad I ever ate. The fried chicken was cold, but perfectly seasoned.
They begged us to take all the leftovers, so we took all we thought we could reasonably eat and thanked them. I wanted to hear more about paddling in this area because we had not seen any paddlers in the entire canal, but they apparently had other business and left. We sat down and dove into our unbelievable meal. As we were finishing up, the man who had first offered the fried chicken returned with a photo album. It was all about his trip making The Great Loop in a small power boat. This is an established loop from the Great Lakes down the Mississippi across Florida, up the Intracoastal Waterway to the Hudson River and back into the Great Lakes from there, via the Erie Canal. An epic trip. We were eager to hear all his stories and look at his pictures. We exchanged cards when he said he had to go. We were sorry to see him go. We would have liked to sit there all afternoon and hear his stories.
One of the things Eric said he wanted from this trip was to stay somewhere long enough to meet someone who would be happy to see us when we returned. The next morning, as we sailed away from the dock, I called our new Great Loop friend and told him to watch for us to pass by. He came down on his dock with his camera and took our picture and waved goodbye. We’d enjoyed our time in La Belle maybe even more than Moore Haven. The Okeechobee Waterway had shown us a really fine time in totally unexpected ways. And it wasn’t finished yet.
Our first sight of Fort Myers wasn’t the prettiest. The power plant is hideous and an awful smog descended, smoke from the burning of sugar cane stubble. We anchored in the only viable anchorage near downtown, between two of the three bridges. The noise of the traffic was intense after the peace and quiet of the waterway. Eric is super-sensitive to this sort of noise, but to me it sounded like my childhood home in Manhattan, minus the horns, squealing brakes and sirens. We tied up for free the next day at the municipal dock downtown. In the marina office we were grilled by the lady at the desk about our intentions, as if we were some sort of criminal element.
“Are you anchored out?” She asked, narrowing her eyes at us.
“Um, we were, but now we’re at your dock,” I said with some puzzlement, feeling suddenly aware of my stained shirt and unwashed hair.
“If you’re anchored out, you have to pay a monthly fee to use the facilities.”
“A monthly fee? But we’re only here for the afternoon.”
With some reluctance, she allowed us to pay for showers. It wasn’t exactly a friendly welcome. We splurged on a nice pizza and got the heck out of there.
Eric had a place picked out for us to stay, back up the river, but when he called and asked about making a touch-and-go to pick up his dad who was coming to visit, they flatly said no. This did not come as a surprise to me after the “un” welcome in Fort Myers, so I made the next call and asked to reserve a slip. This lady, Peggy, was very nice and said we could come anytime. Late in the afternoon we tied up at The Boathouse Tiki Bar and found ourselves sitting by the pool, sipping rum drinks (Eric) and a nice local IPA (me). They had good live music with an excellent sound system, not too loud, just right. The first song he played was my second favorite Jimmy Buffet song, Mother, Mother Ocean. (“..wanted to sail upon your waters/since I was three feet tall”) It almost made me cry.
The pool closed when the sun went down and we ordered a grilled Mahi-Mahi sandwich with curly fries. My mother loved curly fries (who doesn’t?) so I felt her close. (She passed away nine months earlier.) We left the pool and moved to the sand pit ringed with Adirondack chairs and enjoyed the light and heat of a nice fire. The sandwich was huge, plenty for us to share. The fries were hot, crispy and perfectly seasoned. The sun went down behind the palm trees, leaving the sky to pink, lavender and dusky blue. We chatted with our fellow travelers in the neighboring Adirondack chairs and enjoyed a doofy game of cornhole. (This is a game where you try to throw beanbags into a small hole in a board from some distance.) We played two rounds and neither of us made it into the hole, but there was a lot of giggling.
Once again, we were under a bridge, this time even closer, with metal rattling and air brakes honking but finally tapering off as the night came on. But, it seemed not to matter here. The perks of this place, the pool, the tiki bar, the fire pit, seemed to outweigh the negatives. Peggy was kind and friendly. The showers were brand new and spotless, as was the laundry room. All this we got for fifty bucks a night. After we paid for a night, the touch-and-go to pick up Eric’s dad was no problem. As long as we ate at the restaurant we were welcome to tie up for the day anytime. It would be a while before we’d tire of this place. Then, we’d move on. That’s the beauty of a moveable home. Here in Southwest Florida, there was a lot more to see. So much more. We were very glad to have taken the route less traveled. Very happy with how everything worked out.
