Captain's Choice blog: Leaving the East Coast

Our last stop on the East Coast and one of our favorite stops is Vero Beach. We left Cocoa Beach on Saturday and traveled 55 miles to Vero Beach where we stayed 2 nights. The marina is located on the Atlantic side of the Intracoastal and is less than a mile walk to the beach. The weather while we were there was "sunsational"...temps 85 plus, light west winds and sunny! We were thankful for the slight breeze as its been one windy day after another. I don't know what we would do without the intracoastal because we would be stuck in a lot of towns if we had to travel in the ocean.
The town has a shuttle that picks you up at the marina and takes you to the beach or the mainland for shopping, we always walk to the beach but had planned on going to the grocery store by shuttle. Unfortunately it doesn't operate on Sunday, so we got our walking shoes on and did a lot of walking...10 miles according to the step counter.
Sunday was amazing, we started out walking to the beach to see the sunrise, breakfast on the beach, back to the boat, walked to the grocery store, uber back to the boat, back to the beach...and all this by 1 p.m.. Needless to say we both slept great!

Monday we exited the Intracoastal as we made our way from Vero Beach to our anchorage at Pendarvis Cove in the St. Lucie River, 45 miles. We anchored in 8' of water with several transient boats and some other boats that appeared to be anchored there for quite sometime. On the way to the anchorage we were entertained by a dolphin that swam, rolled and jumped around right next to the boat for several miles. A few other dolphins joined in for a couple minutes and then they were gone. We also got a free boat wash when mother nature decided to rain down on us Monday night, which was great as most of the salt was gone by morning.

Once again the winds kicked up on Tuesday, our day to cross Lake Okeechobee. We checked the wind/weather forecast and they were calling for "moderate chop" and Wednesday and Thursday rough water. We headed out and with the winds NW we were taking the waves on the beam (side) which does not constitute a comfortable ride. After a few minutes of going slow we sped up which was much more comfortable and we got across much faster! After 57 miles and 3 locks (2 open to pass right through) we stopped at Roland Martins Marina.
When the dock master was giving us the lay of the land he asked if we had any pets aboard, which we answered "no". He just wanted to make sure because if we did we would have to pay close attention so that the gators wouldn't make him/her dinner!
Our entertainment today were the jumping fish along the canal, they were everywhere and fun to watch.

The locks along the Okeechobee Waterway are different from all other locks in North America in that they do not use valves to let water into the lock. Instead, the front gates on the high water side of the lock are opened about a foot and the water pours into the lock.