We revamped our rowing route for the remainder of the trip to account for our unplanned washout yesterday. Today, Saturday, we are rowing from the Moore Haven Recreational Area to the Ortona Lock Recreational Area, a distance of 16.5 miles. We awoke to clear blue Florida skies and early morning temperatures in the 60’s. We had our final breakfast at Roland and Mary Ann Martin’s Marina, checked out of our condos (really nice this year), and hit the road, transporting the shells to Moore Haven. After unloading, rigging, and spotting the return vehicles, we took our first strokes at 9:45 AM – not bad considering the logistics. We took the short row to Moore Haven lock, passing through quickly with little delay.
After exiting the lock we began to encounter a building west wind (a head wind) that kept the temperatures in the comfortable 70’s but kept our frenetic pace of Thursday a bit more subdued. As long as we stayed close to shore we avoided the heavy chop - the coxswains did a superb job keeping the shells on course.
The crews rowed beautifully as we spent about 3-1/2 hours on the water reaching the Ortona Lock take-out just after 1 PM.
Our pace was remarkably strong considering the headwinds were gusting in excess of 30 mph at times. The touring quads rowed majestically through the chop and we arrived at our destination with plenty of time to load up and head to our “West Coast” hotel, the Best Western Waterfront in North Fort Myers.
We had a bit of “pool time” at the hotel prior to dinner - a nice change. The sheltered pool area gave us plenty of warm Florida sunshine while keeping the wind at bay.
We dined at Pincher’s Restaurant in the hotel – fine local fare with great views and ambiance.
