The Adventure Continues – LaBelle To Fort Myers

After four full days of settling back into life aboard after a nine-month absence, we were ready to go cruising.  As we always talk about, the weather is a primary consideration when making our cruising plans and it was already impacting our intended travel days.  We had originally planned to depart River Forest Yachting Center in LaBelle, Florida a day and a half after arriving back at the boat.  While that day would have been great for travel, the two following days would not have been.  So we decided it made more sense to stay put and continue to prep for our impending travel while enjoying the peacefulness of River Forest’s beautiful property.  It proved to be a great decision as we ended up really needing that time to feel that we, and OLOH, were ready to hit the water.

With all of the waiting and anticipation to be back on the move, there was a bit of irony in that we only needed three travel days to get to our primary winter destination.  We had considered doing a bit of “local” cruising on the Gulf Coast before heading to the Keys but one of our strongest considerations for returning to OLOH was doing it in a way that we felt safe and comfortable in terms of our exposure to crowds of people and busy places.  Anchoring out wasn’t a good option for us at this point for a variety of reasons and the places we like to stop at in the area tend to be quite transient with boaters and tourists.  So we came up with a plan that worked for us to get us from point A to point B in as streamlined a way as possible.

LaBelle to Fort Myers

Fort Myers is an easy 41 statute mile run from LaBelle which we felt would be a perfect opportunity to shake down OLOH after her spring-summer-autumn slumber.  If something wasn’t right and we needed to return to River Forest it would not have been that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.  It was cool out – only forty degrees – and dead calm under clear skies as we awoke on departure day, a Sunday, and slipped back into our departure routine.  As many times as we have gone through the process before, we were careful to be extra conscientious in working our procedures as there are a lot of small details to remember.  Checklists were checked, time was taken and we continuously consulted with each other to make sure we remembered to do everything.  With the exception of a moment when we thought our generator wasn’t making power (the Admiral pointed out that someone must have switched a meter from its usual setting giving us the illusion that we had no power), all went smoothly as we shoved off at 7:54 am.  Given the temps, we ran from the comfort of our pilothouse.

Immediately after exiting River Forest’s basin and turning to the west, you come upon the Ortona Lock.  We had attempted to hail the lock tender before dropping our lines to find out the status of the lock.  In the event it was prepared for an eastbound transit, we would have had to wait a fair amount of time for the lock to be turned around.  Unfortunately, our hails weren’t answered so we decided to drop our lines and proceed after making a securité call to hopefully ensure that no other boats would be in the very narrow canal between the marina and the primary waterway (there’s only room for OLOH).

We only had around a five-minute wait for the lock and we were on our way through, all by ourselves.  There was pervasive anxiety that partially came from falling back into running the boat and partially from the boat not having been run in so long.  After we cleared the lock’s no-wake zone, we were in a good stretch of the waterway to open her up so we could be sure everything was as it should be and there were no vibrations resulting from the running gear work that had been performed.  Fortunately that all went well and we both commented that, while we were not previously aware of any unusual vibrations, OLOH seemed to be running more smoothly than ever which is what you hope for with the work we had done.  We slowed back down, started to relax, and were very happy to be back underway.

It was a quiet day on the water and we didn’t encounter another boat for the first two hours of our travels, probably due to the cooler temps that tend to keep the smaller playboats at the dock, even on a weekend.  We only had one bridge to open and one more lock to transit before entering the tidal Gulf waters as we closed in on Fort Myers.

We usually stay at Legacy Harbor Marina when passing through Fort Myers, a very nice spot with floating docks.  They typically only have one dock that can accommodate us and usually only for one night.  Because of that and because we thought we’d be taking on fuel (no fuel at Legacy) we decided to try out the city marina, Fort Myers Yacht Basin.  As it turned out, River Forest had fulfilled our fuel-up request (we thought they hadn’t) but it was still nice to try something new.  Almost exactly five hours after our departure, we pulled easily into their east basin for an alongside tie and breathed a sigh of relief after we were securely tied after our first run was successful and complete.  Our friend Brian of Shady Harbor Marina back in New York happened to be staying there and along with our friends from Chasing 80 who were visiting with him, so we got a very big and warm welcome as we pulled up.  Jasper is always thrilled to arrive but he goes particularly nuts when he sees familiar faces.

Just one night in Fort Myers and then it’s out to the Gulf as we continue to chase the sun!  See you out there…

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And that concludes your OLOH instructions. M/Y OLOH back to 1-6

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