One night in Moore Haven

Our arrival in Moore Haven was marked by a surprising first... Anne docked C'est la Vie while I handled the lines.  She did an exceptional job on the helm and settled CestlaVie gently along the fixed dock pictured above.  Another pleasant surprise was a visit from Al Wagner, Dan Hunt, and their friend Kale.  The three were running shuttle for a trip to move Kale's Cabo Rico 38 down to Labelle Marina.  We had a nice time sharing stories and catching up.

We are planning on an early start in the morning as we want to arrive at the Park Service package upstream of the St. Luice lock, 70 miles east, tomorrow evening.  Our friends aboard SV-Reverie are transiting the waterway westward and we plan to meet up tomorrow night.

Four draw bridges and two locks astern

We just cleared the Ortona Lock.  18 miles to Moore Haven and we are done for the day. 

A good morning for scones

Oh, after a night of being lulled to sleep by the whipoorwills and a small rain shower.  We awoke to a cool morning. Ah ha I thought I will be able to bake something. Out of the freezer came the blueberries and into the batter. It' time for scones! They were so good out of the oven and now we will have some maybe for tomorrow!

One lock and one bridge astern

We have put the Wilson Pigott bridge and Franklin Lock astern.   We got lucky with the lock and arrived promptly for the 09:00 opening simply by chance.  The next opening is noon.  Guess we just made a withdrawal from our karma bank.  We did check with the lock master and all the other inland locks run "on demand".  The outer locks Franklin on the west and St. Luice on the east are currently running on a three hour (06, 09, 12, 15,18) schedule.

Eastward across Florida

Anchors aweigh and full steam ahead.  We will be spending the entire day today headed east up the Calusahatchee River through central Florida.  Goodbye condos and hello cattle.  We hope to make Moore Haven along the western edge of Lake Okeechobee by this evening.  Before us is sixty miles of river/canal, four drawbridge, and two locks.  Here we go!

Great sailing in the Gulf

Our leap from Naples to Ft. Myers passed in record time as we averaged over 6 knots on a broad reach with Otto at the helm.

Short hop to Naples

We made a short hop from Marco Island to Naples on Monday.  The image included is of C'est la Vie on a mooring ball at Naples City Marina.

Other project that has taken much more time than expected...

Here is an image of my progress on C'est la Vie's companionway steps

 Like so many boat projects this one has taken much longer than expected.  Most of the time has gone to multiple coats of Bristol Finish in search of perfection. I did add non skid to the treads. The only remaining part of this project is to install the new mounting hardware used to attach the steps to the interior of the boat.