Summer Plans Sometimes Change

We will leave Tarpon Springs for the journey south to Marathon today. We'd hoped to cross Lake Okeechobee to reach Indiantown Marina on the St. Lucie Canal, however the lake levels are down. Mystic has no chance of finding enough water. Instead, we are heading for Marathon.

The route we'd hoped to take across the Okeechobee

Photo by seefloridaonline

Hurricane season runs June 1st to November 30th. Our push to get to Indiantown is to settle Mystic there for the summer. She will be hauled out and placed on a cradle which is strapped to the ground with big heavy straps like those used in the trucking industry. Indiantown is considered a Hurricane Hole, a safe harbor. We will head home to Minnesota for the summer and return to cruising in the fall.

It will take us at least three weeks to get to Indiantown the "long way". We are excited to see new places and to be on the move again!

Update: We didn't end up going to Marathon after all. Head winds slowed our progress south. Florida gets afternoon rainstorms every day so we took our chances and stopped in Fort Meyers to wait for lake levels to rise. After three weeks of accumulation, Lake Okeechobee was deep enough to cross. We didn't end up hauling out at Indiantown either; but that's another story!