LOCK-UP, LOCK-DOWN

LINKING TO THAT'S MY WORLD AND WATERY WEDNESDAY. 

Going through river locks was the most adventurous part of our cross-Florida boat trip last week.

There are three locks to go through on the Caloosahatchie and two on the St Lucie.  The locks control the depth of the Lake and allow water to flow into the two rivers.   These are our friends' two boats waiting for the lock to open.  Our boat is very similar to the one in front. 

 The boater radios the dockmaster who tells you which side — port or starboard — you will tie up to. Below are some people watching us from above as we lock up.   You can see the lines along the walls.

 

All five of these locks have lines hanging down to grab hold of.  Our friends said that on the Great Lakes, where they boat in the summer, you have to bring your own. 

 

It can be a little bit scary to bring the boat alongside the wall, especially if the wind is blowing and you have been assigned the side where the wind is blowing the "wrong way".   Usually we both just stand and hold on to a line in the front and back (fore and aft) of the boat.  But a couple of times  the wind was blowing fairly hard and the lockmaster said "someone" had to climb out on the bow and cleat the line (wrap the line around a cleat and take in or let out the slack).  The picture above is the "someone" who did that on our boat.  (I was just hoping that it wasn't the last picture I ever took of Bill.) 

Our boat does not have a walkaround on the outside, so this was not an easy thing at all when next to the lock wall.  (The picture's not great because I was holding on to the other line with one shaky hand while I took it with the other, but in front you can also see the water gushing in.)

The only other thing we had to worry about was that a couple of the locks are on an every-other hour schedule. It's a way to control the flow of water and limit the number of times it opens.  Through careful planning, we got to those locks in good time — not too early, but we weren't worried about being late either. 

The only unplanned slowdown we had was at this railroad bridge just out of Stewart on our way back. 

Trains always have the right-of-way and we had to wait for two of them to go by before the bridge opened.  (The blue boat is just another of the several that were milling around waiting.)