The Caloosahatchee River

On Tuesday we were going to push off at 8 AM but it was foggy.  We were going to travel with two other boats Elizabear and Sadie Two.  We had to wait 2 hours for the fog to lift before we could take off – it was 10 AM before we could begin to see any distance.

The Caloosahatchee River is very nice. The water is dark but it looks blue in the photos. In reality, the water was very dark brown, almost black.  Okeechobee Lake has too much water in it and the locks were letting out water from the lake into the river.  Extracts form the vegetation and black soil run off caused the dark water color. We read a few articles that said this river is considered a natural black river. Most are found in the amazons but there are a couple in north america. However, all the locals are crying fowl as the lake is high and the Corp is dumping more water than usual.

There were a number of bridges we had to go under or call and have them open the or raise the bridge so we decided to just travel 40 miles and stay at a marina, River Forest Yacht Club just past the Ortona Lock.

It was really a nice place, but not near anything.  We did find a small local bar about 1/4 mile walk away that was nice.  This is where we saw our first alligator.

As we were walking back to the marina we notice some wild pigs in a field with a herd of cows.  There were also some baby cows milling around.  The small bar did not serve any food so we grilled out at the marina.

Our friends from Pier 99 Marina spend the winter near here so we gave them a call.  Dave and Barb stopped out to visit us.  Since they had a car we decided to check out the docks at Moore Haven and also the Roland Martin Marina.  We had a reservation at Roland Martin but we wanted to confirm this since they had already delayed us due to a fishing tournament. It was a good thing – the dock master advised that we could not come in on the day they told us and that we could come the next day but after 5 PM.  When we walked around and saw the size of the tournament we began to doubt we should arrive on the weekend at all.   We decided to move to the Moore Haven City docks.