Thursday February 16, 2017
26 47 889 N'
80 47 439 W
The washing and polishing team did not quite finish on Wednesday night so we delayed our departure today to give them a couple of hours to finish up. We were finally underway at about 11 AM. It was a bit of a windy day, but with a favorable forecast for later in the day, so we decided to head for the lake and anchor in the open water if needed.
We needed to pass thru 3 locks to get to the lake - it has been well over a year since we have "locked thru" anywhere - and with all our new paint and the windy conditions I was a bit nervous. As we headed into the first lock we tried to recollect our previous "lock routines". Otherwise the first section of the Okeechobee waterway was uneventful and as the afternoon progressed the weather seemed to settle - until we got into the lake. The last lock put us into the lake at about 4:30 PM and we used the last 90 minutes of daylight to get 80% across. Conditions on the lake had been surprisingly choppy with 20-25 MPH wind on our beam that put a lot dirty spray on our beautifully clean boat. Such a shame.
Anchoring in the open with decent holding is no big deal for Tide Hiker and the forecast still promised improvement, so we continued until dark when we pulled off the "magenta line" by a 1/4 mile and dropped the hook. We both needed to find our see legs as Tide Hiker certainly bounced around until well after dark.
The great news was that the TV picked up 72 TV stations in the middle of the lake - so much better than the lousy 10 or 15 at our slip! Take out all the religious, Hispanic and shopping channels and we still had a great selection. We stayed up until midnight just watch TV!
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