Stuart to Ft Myers

We spent three days in Stuart with our good friends Jim and Linda.  They are Jillian's God Parents and we had not seen them in 25 years.  We had a great visit with them and we picked up again just as if we had seen them last  week.  Jim was kind enough to take us to the produce stand, Publix, and West Marine.  I had to get a patch kit for the dingy as I  caught a 3 lb. catfish and while trying to de-hook him he managed to put a hole in each tube with his sharp spines!  From now on I will cut the line and let the hook stay in  their mouth!  On Friday we took off from Stuart and headed down the St Luise River and the Okeechobee  Waterway and across the lake.  We had to wait on numerous bridges and went through 2 lock and dams which took us 8 1/2 hours to go 60 + miles. You only cross the lake for about 20 miles to Clewiston.  We had light winds and a minor chop and were lucky as boats crossing earlier had 2-3 footers with full on beam seas.  Not a lot of fun rolling in that. We spent the night at nice little Marina that had live music and a decent restaurant. We took off the next day at 8:30 and ended up running all the way to Ft Myers doing 3 more lock and dams and a couple of bridges.  Around Moore Haven FL I picked up something around the starboard prop. We could only run about 8 knots with out it vibrating.  I tried spinning it off in reverse a couple of times and was able to run about 1800 RPM's and 10 Knots.  We pulled back into Legacy Harbour Marine where we had spent Nov and Dec around 5:15. This completed the Florida Loop from Ft. Myers Beach around the Keys back of the Florida east coast and across  Okeechobee to Fort Myers.  600 miles in just shy of 6 weeks.  I had the bottom cleaned this AM and the diver pulled off a bunch more nylon rope off the shaft.  I will post one more time with my final thoughts about Putz'n Arounds great adventure.