TO SAY CARL EARNED HIS CAPTAIN BARS                                                IS                                         THE UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE YEAR!!!!!!
But before we get to all that lets see how the day started. We had anchored out in the waterway for a pretty quiet night . Carl tried fishing again, but the fish is fresh water need way more quiet than we can provide. It's pretty hard on Carl to keep trying and not get what he is going after. Since we didn't get to Slim Fish Camp the day before we decided to stop there in morning and get some tips from local fisherman. This was a very nice place, with a big park attached which made Bella real happy. We were there for about 2 hours while Carl tried his hand at fishing and me & Bella played ball and ran around. Still no fish..A man we were talking to said you had to sneak up on the fish and not move or make a sound to get one.
Once we headed up the waterway, Carl was at the helm and I had just finished exercising, when Carl had just commented how boring the waterway was.The Okeechobee Lake is the second largest lake in the US, second only to Lake Michigan. The winds picked up and the dark clouds rolled in. At this point he told me to stow the charts below and ready for the rain.The storm came rolling across the lake. It was a summer squall!!.The skies  opened up and the rain came pouring down, and the winds picked up BIG TIME.  I got Carl his rain slicker and went down below and started closing all hatches and portholes. The rain was so heavy you could hardly see, the winds were 30 to 35 miles per hour and the sea's were 5 to 6ft high, on the port aft quater . Carl yelled " Get your life jackets on" which I did for myself and Bella. I tried to get him to put his on , but he said he couldn't .Thank God we didn't have our sails up or we would have been toast.We were rocking and rolling and the starboard rail was in the water, I was afraid we were gonna roll, we were  only 100 ft off the leeward shore. Very dangerous...I was praying that God let us survive. When it was finally over the Bimini was broke and the dingy was full of water.. This was a very scary!! How Carl got us through this is a miracle to me... Thanks Carl.... Needless to say he has earned his Capt. bars over and over on this trip.
As John had warned the channel got very, very shallow, well he was right.. We were dragging our keel and the only thing that got us through was the storm waves, smaller but still gave us a push . We pasted through the 4th locke and got into the St. Lucie Channel, and decided to pull into the 1st marina. We docked at Indian Town marina where we walked Bella, made dinner and did laundry. Oh yeah, we also enjoyed the sailors drink that John & Petra gave us, of ginger beer and rum.. Thanks guys... Carl deserved any drink he wanted after getting us through the day...Carl , brave, strong, and able to handle anything that comes our way..