We departed from the marina this morning at 0800 and continued around the Rim Route of the lake... I was a little concerned at to what the water depths would be like since the reported navigable depth was 6.5 feet on the Jacksonville Army Corp of Engineers website... but did not see anything under 9 feet all the way to Clewiston where the Rim Route merges with Route 1 across the lake.

We did have one interesting bridge... the Tory Island Bridge... it's a manually operated swing bridge... the bridge tender comes out and puts a long pole into something in the center of the bridge and then begins to walk in circles pushing the long bar around and around and around as the bridge slowly swings open. He was not a very happy bridge tender either... very grumpy on the radio... I knew it was a manually operated bridge and thought I would give him a heads up so he could get started on the opening as we approached... NOT... when I hailed he told me to come up to the bridge and stop and then he would come out an open the bridge. Last communication I had with him even though I made several attempts to talk to him via the VHF... he would not even wave at us as we passed through... very grumpy indeed... I thanked him and wished him a Merry Christmas as we cleared the bridge.

We missed the westbound locking at the Moore Haven Lock by 10 minutes so we had to wait about 15 minutes after we arrived for the lock tender to refill the lock chamber and give us a green light to enter.

The interesting thing was the boost of speed we were getting after reaching Clewiston on the rim canal... at the RPM we were running we should of been doing about 6.9 knots... instead we were doing 7.4 to 7.6 knots and the push continued after the lock as well... it did not appear as if they were releasing water from the lake but they had to have been for us to be getting a 1.2 knot boost in speed... not complaining... it was nice to get a little extra speed.

We had planned to stop in Moore Haven but with extra speed all morning it was just too early so we continued on... looking in the guide books and active captain we thought we would try the newer marina boat yard just before the Ortona Lock,,, River Forest Yachting Center... we called and no answer only able to leave a message... a hour or so passed and no return call so we tried another place we had seen many times before but never stayed there... Glades RV Resort and Marina... just a little before the Glades Boat Storage. We called them and someone answered... made a reservation... 30 minutes later we were entering their harbor. Met at the docks by a very nice gentlemen who assisted us with our lines.

It's an RV park basically that has some docks that they rent out... nothing fancy at all... not sure where the "resort" is... but it's nice. Besides the dockmaster who met us there were several other people either walking up or driving their golf cart up to see the boat that had arrived.

This place did prove again just how small a world we live in... one of the people coming down to greet us was from Connecticut and after talking to him for a few minutes we discovered that he had known Susan's Dad George and was from Cheshire... not only did he know George but all the people George knew... guess they had gone to school together in Cheshire... such a small, small world... LOL

Anyway, we were securely docked at N26°47.288', W081°13.807'. We traveled today for 6.5 hours covering 42.3 nautical miles averaging 6.5 knots even with the delays at the bridge and the lock.