The Journey is over for now

Once we left La Belle we continued down the Caloosahatchee Canal and River. The river is broad, lush with vegetation, and deep with a slight current carrying us on our way. It really was one of the prettiest rivers we have been on.

As we got closer to the next and final lock the water turned green and seemed covered in pollen or something like that. As we went through the water the wake turned almost flourescent green - very odd.

As we locked down another few feet at the Franklin Lock we asked the lock tender and he said it was an algae bloom caused by the phosphate runoffs from the adjoining farmland - not good. We were now back at sea level and except for the occasional bridge we had clear motoring.

As we got closer to civilization, Ft. Meyers being the next big town, the local tourists started showing up. I don't know where these guys we going but they were making good time.

After Ft. Meyers we finally turned north and went through Pine Island Sound past the large islands of Sanibel and Captiva and the smaller ultra-ritzy Useppa Island (I think you have to be a billionaire before you can land there) and Cabbage Key - which is famous for its restaurant that is lined with one dollar bills. The custom is to sign your boat's name on the bill and tack it on the wall; every few years they take them down, donate the money to a local charity and start anew. You can have your "Cheeseburger in Paradise" there!

Pine Island Sound is also home to 'fishing shacks' that are built on stilts in the open water - nice way to get away from the bugs.

After that long stretch from Daytona Beach, the subsequent near panic of the engine leak, and the nerve wracking crossing of Lake Okeechobee, we felt we deserved a break so we arranged for a slip at Gasparilla Marine in Placida just off the waterway. Oh joy, hot showers for as long as you want, a bar that served Margarita's on ice, and a sit down dinner at a table that didn't rock! The wierd thing is that after several days on a boat (I hadn't been off the boat for three days) you still feel like you are rocking.

Lazy morning and just made it to the 9:00 opening of another swing bridge and then up the waterway to our old stomping grounds and a nice anchorage by the De Soto monument.

Hernando De Sota landed here in 1536, probably claimed everything in sight for Spain, and dropped off 10 Jesuit priests to convert the locals. He also lost a few pigs in the bushes and apparently this is the beginning of the pork industry in the US - seriously! This is also the site of a pre-historic Indian village dating back to 350 BC.

Up the next morning for a very lumpy ride across Tampa Bay to Salt Creek Marina to be hauled out. They called us about 45 minutes from our arrival, told us the hoist was ready with the slings in the water, and to just drive it into the haulout slip. At about 9:30 we arrived and 15 minutes later we were off the boat and it was being hauled out for a pressure wash and blocking on land. Jeez - that was fast! Kind of disconcerting - the journey is over. We made it.

We went 1,266 miles on the waterways and another 70 or so on the Cheasepeake. We put just under 200 hours on the engine; in a car at 50 miles an hour that's equivalent to roughly 10,000 miles so you can see how slow we were going. The ICW is an amazing feat of engineering and maintenance: we went through miles and miles of rivers, channels, bays, sounds, canals, bridges, day markers (keep the red on the right) and locks. All of this is maintained by the US Coast Guard and US Army Corps of Engineers. Pretty neat. We're almost ready to do it again.

Thanks for reading all this - I hope it was worth your time.