Rise and Shine at 0600… well maybe 0630 as the snooze was hit several times before we actually got out of bed. Planned departure time of 0730… cross the Lake Okeechobee and have a 30 minute buffer to make the 1130 locking at Port Mayacca Lock.

We departed with several other boats all that were at Roland Martins Marina… We were boat number two underway at 0730 just as planned. I had to back out of the marina fairway… had been a while since backing any distance… but all went smoothly.

The forecast was for 5-10 knot winds again and it was not too far off. We had a one foot chop on the lake and had a very pleasant crossing. The other boats that departed after us soon passed us and they all rushed to the lock… WHY? I have no idea as they sat and waited… some of them a couple of hours… we arrived with about 15 minutes to spare at 1115. Right on the dot… 1130 the lock gates opened and all five boats proceeded directly through the lock into the St. Lucie Canal as both gates were open for a straight through no stop passage.

Within a few minutes all the other boats were out of sight and we were alone heading east. A lot of boats passed us heading west… evidently none of them aware of the lock being closed until 1630 as they were all in a hurry to get there only to have to wait.

We had one more lock today… the St. Lucie Lock and we missed making an east bound lockage by about 15 minutes so we had to wait at this lock for almost an hour before we made it through. This was the first real delay we had to endure so far this trip. The lock dropped us about 14 feet to the level of the St. Lucie River.

We decide to change things up a little this trip so instead of stopping at the Stuart City Docks we continued on to an area we had not been into since 2011… the Manatee Pocket. A very popular well protected anchorage. We arrived to find it packed with boats… I counted 25 boats anchored in a very small area. We managed to find a large enough gap and dropped the hook.

At 1800 and we were securely anchored at position N27°09.257’, W080°11.699’. We traveled today for 10 hours 30 minutes covering 57.0 nautical miles averaging 5.43 knots.