Pollard,
Your post brings back memories. In 1992-1993 I was a dump truck owner/operator working on the Eastern Beltway from the south end of the Lake Jessup bridge to Red Bug Road. At the end of the day we would park our big trucks at the blast freezer that was near the highway on Black Hammock Road.
Interesting that the bridge was completed months before we started the road construction. It was a mess! All the muck and mud had to be dug out and replaced with clean fill dirt for the road bed. It was impossible for a loaded dump truck to turn around, near the bridge, because of the soft soil so we had to turn around near the overpass and back down about a quarter mile to the dump location.
WE were driving across the bridge long before the road was completed. I noted then that I never wanted to get out on that lake because of all the gators I saw while driving across the bridge.
About that same timeframe, a young girl became lost in the swamp between the Ovido road and the lake. Everyone thought she would be taken by the gators but she was found a couple of days later relatively unharmed. Don’t know how she managed that.
Just some thoughts about gators and Lake Jessup. If you love your Dogs, don’t let them get near any lake, pond, stream or drainage/retention pond, even in a subdivision, because there will probably be a gator in there that will take your dearly loved K-9 companion.
A few years ago a young female student at U.F. took her beautiful Irish Setter to play at a soccer field. the field bordered on a swampy area and when the dog got near that area a gator took the dog, right there in view of the girl. Needless to say she was devastated.
Topsail,
The lake was pretty high when we went out so we couldn’t really tell if the mast was going to clear the bridge or not so we didn’t take the chance. My neighbor wanted to show me an island on the other half of the lake.
I live in MO now so my sailing days are over but after learning on that little foam filled plastic sailboat, I caught the bug and got a 22 foot Rhodes cabin cruiser. I’d stay out all weekend on Lake Harris out by Tavares. Wife and kids would go out with me Saturday, then she’d take the truck and they’d go home for the night and pick me up Sunday morning. I’d sail until midnight Sat, set anchor and crash, wake up at dawn and sail some more.