Indiantown Marina
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” ―Douglas Adams
The Pearl has been on her last run of the season, maybe the year, these past two days. It's always a little sad to put her in storage, but this year is even harder, since it may be 8-9 months before we return. Since we are leaving her for so long and in Florida during the summer, we have decided to have her hauled and stored on the hard. We are keeping her at Indiantown Marina, which is located west of Stewart in the Okeechobee Waterway.
We spent all day Monday retrieving our car from Lamb's Marina in Jacksonville. Jacksonville is 3 1/2 hours from Ft. Piece and then left the car a little further south of Ft. Pierce in Indiantown. It was a total of 8 1/2 hours on the road by the time we made it back to the boat…a very long day for people who haven't been in a car for about 4 months.
Tuesday we cruised down to Stuart and through the St. Lucie Lock on the Okeechobee. We docked at the lock marina for the night, since we couldn’t get into Indiantown Marina until Wednesday. We were hoping we could get in early, but no such luck. This is a busy time of year for them and they are scheduled weeks in advance.
Today we called the marina and were told our slip would be ready at 3:00. So I spent the morning getting things organized, packing and taking inventory of what we will leave on the boat and what I will need to buy when we return. Stan washed the boat, took care of getting the dinghy and the outboard ready to be stored and lubricated all the deck fittings and locks. Most of his work will begin once we get to the marina.
At 1:00 we released the line for the last time this season and slowly moved west to The Pearl's new home. We had a peaceful trip to Indiantown, but we had to wait about thirty minutes for our slip to be ready...this place is packed at the moment. Old friends greeted us when we arrived. We haven’t seen Cheryl and Peter in over four years, but we have kept in touch through the Internet. It was great to see them. They've always teased us that we were on their boat. They finally gave up on us returning it and bought their own trawler. They also own two boats...see we're not the only crazy people. After taking a break and catching up with our friends, it was back to work.
We are scheduled to be hauled out on Friday morning. They will place her in the storage yard and strap her down (hurricane protection). Once she is on the hard, we will finish some last minute jobs to prepare her for her long stay and we will begin our trip back to Texas.
This was lock number 128 for us...it's all a piece of cake!
The docks were a little small but we made it work
It's nice to be able to count on a good sunset when there aren't many pictures for the day.
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